Speyside Bourbon Cooperage in Smyth lays off 75 workers

Speyside Bourbon Cooperage in Atkins will lay off 75 employees at the end of April due to slowdowns in the bourbon industry, according to a Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) letter dated Feb. 28.

Speyside plans to end second-shift production and third-shift maintenance at the Smyth County facility. Laid-off workers may be recalled “as business needs warrant based on department, by seniority,” according to the letter.

Sales of American whiskey, a category that includes bourbon, increased during the pandemic. But good times don’t last forever. In 2024, domestic sales of American whiskey dropped 1.8%, according to the Distilled Spirits Council of the United States. A Feb. 11 economic briefing by the council attributed the slowdown to an increase of prices for goods in the United States, which has limited consumers’ discretionary spending.

A tariff war could make the sales slump worse.

On Wednesday, the European Union announced plans to raise tariffs on American goods, including bourbon, as a response to Trump’s 25% increase in tariffs on steel and aluminum imports.

President Donald Trump, in a Thursday morning social media post, vowed a new escalation in his trade war if the EU goes forward with the planned 50% tax on American whiskey, threatening a 200% tariff on European wine, Champagne and spirits.

“The U.S.-EU spirits sector is the model for fair and reciprocal trade, having zero-for-zero tariffs since 1997,” Chris Swonger, CEO and president of the Distilled Spirits Council, said in a statement Thursday. “We urge President Trump to secure a spirits agreement with the EU to get us back to zero-for-zero tariffs, which benefits the hospitality industry and U.S. craft distillers who export their products. We want toasts not tariffs.”

Tariffs, according to Bob Hausladen, program director of the distilled spirits business certificate at the University of Louisville College of Business, would slow the bourbon industry down. “But I don’t expect it to stop things,” he said.

The global bourbon market grew by 6.4% in 2024, according to the Business Research Company, a market intelligence firm based in Florida.

While tariffs might hurt American whiskey sales to Europe, Japan and India are both home to bourbon lovers, Hausladen noted. “I think we’ll still get some growth internationally,” he said.

Plans to invest $26 million to build the Speyside Bourbon Cooperage in Atkins were announced in 2018, by then-Gov. Ralph Northam, who said the project expected to create 125 jobs. The cooperage launched operations in February 2020, according to the Virginia Economic Development Partnership.

Speyside Bourbon Cooperage is a division of Speyside Cooperage, which was founded in 1947 in Scotland. In 2008, the Tonnellerie François Frères Group bought Speyside Cooperage. In the United States, Speyside has cooperages in Kentucky and Ohio.

The company opened a stave mill in Bath County in 2018. The mill produces staves, or strips of wood, from American White Oak, which are used to make the company’s bourbon barrels. In 2020, Speyside opened another stave mill in Washington County. In July, Gov. Glenn Youngkin announced Speyside’s plans to invest $16.85 million to build another stave mill in Pittsylvania County‘s Brosville Industrial Park, a project expected to create 40 jobs.

A request for comment Thursday on the status of the Pittsylvania County project was not immediately returned by Matt Rowe, director of economic development in Pittsylvania County. Messages to Speyside Bourbon Cooperage and officials in Smyth County were also not immediately returned.

Details about the WARN notice were posted on the Virginia Department of Workforce Development and Advancement site Wednesday.

The Associated Press contributed to this article.