Lyre’s raises £18 million in “strategic” funding and appoints new CEO

The Australian-born non-alcoholic spirits company has announced the completion of a strategic funding round, raising close to £18 million to meet accelerated global demand.

In response to this funding milestone, a statement from Lyre’s said: “the business has up weighted the leadership team’s collective expertise”, resulting in a shift, with former Chief Marketing Officer Paul Gloster taking over as Chief Operating Officer.

“It’s a real honour to be given the opportunity to build the next stage of our growth. I’ve been with Lyre’s pretty much since the start, and as CMO, my role was to build the strongest brand we could, and now the challenge is to build the strongest business we can whilst continuing to deliver the vision set by the Founders Mark and Carl,” said Gloster.

Tasked with raising the funds were pedigree investors DSquared, based in London and Dubai, and the US-based Morgan Creek Consumer Fund. Existing shareholders endorsed the material investment.

As the world’s number one trending non-alcoholic brand according to Drinks International, Lyre’s is experiencing extraordinary year-on-year growth in all key markets, including Australia, North America, Europe and the Middle East.

“It’s been a challenge to grow at the pace that we have, we’re a new Brand in a rapidly emerging category so demand doesn’t come in neat bundles with a bow on top. Having the right stock in the right place at the right time has been a challenge and we haven’t always got it right,” said Gloster.

Gloster said the funding boost would be accompanied by a shift in direction that the founders and management team put forward to investors, a plan designed to remove barriers to growth and implement optimisation across the business and have the resources to take advantage of opportunities in emerging markets in North America and the Middle East.

“Our new expanded leadership structure ensures accountability across all our strategic priorities and business functions,” said Gloster. “Over the next 12 months, we will be really focusing on moving from Start-up to Scale-up.

“There’s some back-of-house work to do on processes to put into place as we grow up as a business, but mainly it will be about putting in place the right supply chain to be able to capture the growing customer and consumer demand we are seeing across the globe,” he said.

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