In a challenging time for the craft brewing industry, West Australian brewery, Beerfarm, is determined to buck the trend. With its recent acquisition of Feral Brewing's production facilities and sights on global markets, Keira Joyce speaks to Beerfarm founder and director, Ian Atkins, about plans for the brewery.
West Australian brewery, Beerfarm, is based in Metricup, in the state's Margaret River wine region. It began its journey in 2015, when five friends decided to open a pub. It has since swelled to a crew of over 50 people, with more in the summer holiday season, that has an on-site production capability of 1.2 million litres per annum.
Beerfarm founder and director, Ian Atkins, shed some light on the company’s future plans, including its national growth strategy, now that Beerfarm has an established presence in the Western Australian market.
“The more people that we can attract into Beerfarm as a brand and as an ethos – we have distilled it down to a single sentence, which is we're looking to create an international beer brand,” said Atkins.
“Part of that is to continue the national growth, but it's also to continue into international waters as well, and take an Australian product overseas. I believe we do have a product range and a brand that resonates with people.”
With the substantial expansion Beerfarm has experienced, they made the decision in May to purchase Coca-Cola Europacific Partners’ (CCEP) equity stake in Feral Brewing’s Bassendean production facilities.
The purchase will see Feral Brewing’s production facilities being used to produce Beerfarm’s current range of products, along with maintaining Feral’s current production needs, and will enable Beerfarm to triple its production capabilities.
Atkins, said that as the company outgrew its main facility, it had been working with the team in Bassendean for the past 12 months.
“We were actually working with at Bassendean already, so we were fully aware of the people, the facilities – it is an extension to who we are anyway,” said Atkins.
“So from that aspect it's great – in terms of that additional headroom to grow into, obviously that’s part and parcel of the wider growth strategy to become a true national player. Part of that journey is obviously the appointment of Viren.”
Beerfarm appointed Viren Goundrie as head of sales in early June. Goundrie has experience with independent brewery expansion and held multiple roles at Byron Bay based Stone & Wood from 2012-2023, including national sales manager. He was part of the team that grew the business to the point that it was acquired by Kirin-owned beverage company, Lion.
“It's not only what he delivered in the past, but it's exciting to actually talk to him and see what he wants to deliver in the future as well – a combination of Beerfarm and Viren together,” said Atkins.
“I believe that there’s a lot for us to be able to achieve as part of that national growth strategy. It’s super exciting, in a time when the press is a little bit doom and gloom at the moment.”
The new facilities will allow the Beerfarm team to expand, not only its production volume, but its product range.
“We have a full new product development pathway. We’ve recently launched our Ginger Beer, which has hit the markets and been very well received,” said Atkins.
“We've also just released a new lager, which has been in development for some time now. That’s really part of our national and international expansion – being able to produce an easy drinking, approachable lager for everybody.”
“There will always be further development around flavour profiles, and we still have a lot of seasonals that we wish to produce as well. We do a native series, which is a little bit unique and very popular,” he said.
Due to the company’s methods of working with local communities to forage the ingredients used in the native series, it has a very limited supply, but they aim to expand the range. The company is also keen to expand its physical facilities outside of Western Australia.
“We've also been looking at and working quite hard for the past few years to build a facility in New South Wales,” said Atkins.
“We've got a development application that we are hopeful will turn a result soon, based on the Central Coast, which is about an hour out of Sydney.”
Beerfarm’s success comes at a challenging time for the beer industry, particularly for the craft brewing industry, but also the big end of town. Lion, closed Malt Shovel Brewery last week, citing a drop in discretionary spending, the shrinking beer market, and increasing costs. It followed Asahi Beverages closing the Matilda Bay Brewpub in Healesville, Victoria in May.
Lion managing director, James Brindley, said beer producers were having a tough time all round, with volumes falling in Australia by 100 million litres since 2019.
“There have also been ongoing cost-of-living pressures reducing discretionary spending, and continuing increases in costs like energy, labour and ingredients, as well as government excise, which is now the third highest in the world,” said Brindley.
It is only the latest in a long string of closures over the last 18 months, to the point that the Independent Brewers Association has ramped up pressure on the government to freeze excise indexation and adopt other strategies to support the sector.
Atkins described the string of voluntary administrations that craft breweries are experiencing as a testament to the pressures of the market. He also reiterated some of the challenges that Beerfarm and the industry are facing.
“It is a challenging market and we're very aware that there's a lot of good companies and good people that are doing it very tough at the moment.
“High interest rates, excise linked to CPI increases with inflation out of control at the moment, rising costs in aluminium and raw materials, and being in a market where people don't have as much disposable cash – we're very aware of the pressures within this market segment at the moment,” he said.
“It’s actually a very complicated industry in my opinion – there is a lot to it, not only food manufacturing, but also sales and distribution, and the front end hospitality component that goes with that. I think you have to have a grade A team to be able to deliver those sorts of things in the market.”
