Economy Minister Dr Caoimhe Archibald has announced an investment of almost £2m by The Boatyard Distillery at its Fermanagh site, funded through new equipment, automation technology and sustainability upgrades that are expected to scale annual production from around 300,000 bottles to over 1.6 million — five times the current amount. Invest NI is putting £510,000 towards it through its Agri-Food Investment Initiative. Read the headline and it sounds like the state is bankrolling a £2m production overhaul. Read the numbers and Invest NI is funding roughly a quarter of it, with Boatyard itself finding the other three-quarters.
That is not the interesting part of this announcement, though. The interesting part is what happens to Boatyard's own money once it is spent, because a public body's grant does not just cover less of the project than the headline suggests — it also shrinks how much of the rest can be relieved for tax, under a rule that already applies to every Northern Ireland business taking Invest NI or council support toward equipment. Understood correctly, that rule is also where a growing manufacturer can claw a meaningful amount of cash back this year rather than over a decade.
What Invest NI actually announced
The Boatyard Distillery was founded in 2016 by Fermanagh entrepreneur Joe McGirr and operates from Tully Bay Marina on the shores of Lough Erne. It is Ireland's first B-Corp certified distillery, producing a range of premium organic spirits, including gin and vodka, and exports to a growing customer base across the US, Britain and Ireland. The investment will modernise and expand its distillation facilities, and the company says the new capacity will also support continued product development, including V-52, a new mid-strength spirit already helping drive its next phase of growth. The project creates three new jobs.
Joe McGirr said: "This investment will give us the production capability we need to produce five times the amount of bottles annually, meaning we can meet demand while maintaining the quality and consistency our customers expect." Ethna McNamee, Invest NI's Head of Regional Business for the Western region, said the project "is an endorsement of The Boatyard Distillery's ambition and the growing strength of Northern Ireland's food and drink sector," and that Invest NI's in-market teams in Canada, the US and Japan are working with the company to develop export opportunities. Invest NI's release also notes the company has previously drawn on loan finance through Whiterock Capital Partners and equity investment through Co-Fund NI, managed by Clarendon Fund Managers.
The part of the headline worth doing the arithmetic on
Invest NI's own release gives the total project cost as "almost £2m" rather than an exact figure, so the maths below is against that reported figure rather than a published exact total. Taken at face value, £510,000 against "almost £2m" is roughly a quarter of the project, leaving Boatyard to find somewhere close to £1.49m itself — whether from retained profit, its existing loan and equity finance, or new borrowing.
| Boatyard Distillery investment, announced 21 September 2026 | Amount | Approx. share |
|---|---|---|
| Total project cost (Invest NI's own figure) | almost £2m | 100% |
| Invest NI support (Agri-Food Investment Initiative) | £510,000 | ~25% |
| Funded by Boatyard itself | ~£1.49m | ~75% |
None of that is a criticism of the scheme. Invest NI's Agri-Food Investment Initiative is designed to help an already-viable business adopt new technology, not to fund the whole project, and a quarter of a near-£2m production overhaul is a genuinely significant contribution. But it is a very different number to plan a cash flow forecast around than "almost £2m," and it is the number that matters before an offer letter arrives, not after.
What happens to the £1.49m Boatyard puts in itself
Here is the part that gets skipped in most coverage of an Invest NI announcement. Capital Allowances Act 2001 sections 532 and 533, set out in HMRC's Capital Allowances Manual at CA14100, treat a contribution towards capital expenditure from a public body, which includes Invest NI, as reducing the cost of the asset before capital allowances are calculated. The £510,000 Invest NI is providing simply never enters Boatyard's qualifying expenditure for tax purposes. Relief is only ever available on the money the company finds itself — which is exactly why what happens to that self-funded share matters as much as the headline grant figure.
Put illustrative numbers on it, scaled to Boatyard's own roughly one-in-four grant share rather than claiming to know the company's actual figures. Say a Fermanagh producer buys £1,500,000 of new production equipment and receives a £375,000 Invest NI grant towards it, a quarter of the cost. Under the rule above, the £375,000 is netted off first, leaving £1,125,000 of qualifying expenditure — already past the £1,000,000 Annual Investment Allowance cap for the year.
| Illustrative Fermanagh producer, £1.5m spend, 25% Invest NI grant | Relieved | Tax saved at 25% |
|---|---|---|
| Qualifying expenditure after netting off the grant | £1,125,000 | — |
| Claimed on the Annual Investment Allowance alone (capped at £1m, balance at 14% writing down) | £1,017,500 | £254,375 |
| Claimed using full expensing instead, on new main-rate plant and machinery | £1,125,000 | £281,250 |
Full expensing gives a limited company 100% relief on new and unused main-rate plant and machinery in the year of purchase, with no cap at all, unlike the Annual Investment Allowance's £1,000,000 ceiling. On this illustrative spend, that is £26,875 more tax saved this year purely from claiming the right relief on the right pounds — before any allowance for special-rate spend such as wiring, climate control or ventilation for a production facility, which relieves at a much slower 6% a year regardless of which relief covers the rest.
What it means for a Northern Ireland producer specifically
If you are scaling production with Invest NI or council support behind part of the bill, the number to plan around is not the total project cost, and it is not even the amount you are personally funding before tax — it is that self-funded amount after the grant has been netted off under CAA 2001 s532, because that is the actual figure your capital allowances claim starts from. Get your equipment invoice split into new main-rate machinery, which a limited company can fully expense, and special-rate integral features, which cannot be fully expensed at any size of business, before you claim anything. And if your business is a sole trader or partnership rather than a limited company, full expensing is not available to you at all; the Annual Investment Allowance, capped at £1,000,000, is what you have, alongside a 40% first-year allowance introduced from 1 January 2026 for new main-rate plant and machinery, open to unincorporated businesses as well as companies.
What to do this week
If you are planning a similar production investment, look at Invest NI's Agri-Food Investment Initiative page to see the current eligibility criteria and funding rate before you build a business case around a specific grant percentage, since Invest NI does not publish a fixed rate and each offer is assessed individually. Before you sign a purchase order for new equipment, run the split between main-rate and special-rate spend, and check whether full expensing or the Annual Investment Allowance gets you more relief this year using our own capital allowances calculator.
If Invest NI or council support is part of your funding plan, get the tax treatment agreed with your accountant before the grant is paid, not after your accounts are drafted, since the netting-off happens in the same accounting period as the spend rather than when the cash from the grant actually lands. Our related note on what a Newry company's Invest NI grant did to its tax return and on a Causeway Coast council grant and the same netting-off rule both work through the mechanics in more detail.
What is still uncertain, and when we'll know
Invest NI's release gives the project cost as "almost £2m" rather than a published exact figure, and does not say whether the £510,000 is being paid as a single capital grant or released in stages against the equipment as it is installed and commissioned, which affects exactly when the qualifying expenditure is reduced for tax purposes. It also does not break down how much of the spend is new main-rate machinery against special-rate items such as wiring or climate control for the expanded facility. Boatyard has not yet filed accounts covering this investment at Companies House, so there is no independent confirmation beyond Invest NI's own release of how the money is being spent inside the business. What is fixed and checkable now: the £510,000 support figure, the Agri-Food Investment Initiative programme it comes through, and the capital allowances rules used above, both the £1,000,000 Annual Investment Allowance cap and the CAA 2001 s532 netting-off rule, confirmed unchanged for the 2026/27 tax year with no Budget date yet set that could move them again.
A grant that covers a quarter of a production overhaul is exactly the kind of thing our capital allowances service is built to get right before the invoices are paid, and our management accounts service keeps the real, grant-adjusted cost of a big equipment plan visible every month rather than as a surprise when the tax computation is done.