By 1930 the distillery was subsidiary of DCL, which closed it down at the onset of the Depression. For the next 37 years it was used only for malting and warehousing, a fate it still endures except for a brief revival from 1967 to 1984. By the early 1970's it was obvious that the three DCL distilleries on Islay were producing between them only a third of their total malt requirements, and so the decision was made to build a centralised maltings alongside the distillery at Port Ellen. The new facility opened in 1973 and now supplies all the working distilleries on Islay and Jura. It is a drum maltings, each of the seven drums holding 46 tons of barley.
Germination takes five days, after which the green malt is dried in one of three kilns.
The size of the charge means that kilning takes about 30 hours, twice as long as in an average drum maltings on the mainland. A combination of peat smoke and hot air is used to dry the grain and the exact amount of peating given depends on the distillery at which the malt will be used. Her Majesty the Queen visited the maltings on 11 August 1980 and a special bottling of Port Ellen whisky was made to mark the occasion. The distillery is closed and unlikely to go back into production, although the warehouses are being used by Lagavulin. None at present time.