Business Basics Business profile: Full Circle Brew Co

How did you come to found Full Circle and how has the business developed since then?

Name: Full Circle Brew Co

Founded: 2020

Location: Newcastle Upon Tyne

Owners: Family-owned, led by Ben Cleary

Annual production: 3,000hl (2022), 7,000hl (predicted 2023)

Production split: 75% keg, 25% can (recently started doing cask)

Brewing team: 4 (plus one part time)

Total Staff: 20

Flagship beers: Looper (6.4% ABV IPA) and Repeater (4.2% ABV Session IPA)

Key export markets: France and Denmark

“I was in the wine trade for eight years prior, and I used to have a bottle shop and national ecommerce business under the name The Pip Stop. We started selling a lot more craft beer, and it became more of an interest to me. It was something that I wanted to pursue and move away from the wine world. I find it much more creative, and a little less snooty! The beer scene is much more collaborative and friendly than the wine is in some ways, and very forward thinking which is nice. So me and my head brewer Alex, he was actually studying at Brewlab because he wanted to change his career. And he was winning every homebrew competition going at the Newcastle BrewDog homebrew competitions. We met through The Pip Stop, he lived nearby and he'd come in and bring his beers in, and they were arguably better than anything I had on the shelves. So me and him set out to grow something bigger. We had a little 100 litre kit, and he was brewing in a little cold warehouse up in Stanley in County Durham. We were creating the core recipes at that point, so we were doing different iterations and sampling them through The Pip Stop. The way I saw this was, it's not about what we think, it's about what the customer thinks. So we would try and meet with customers every week, and we ended up going through six iterations of each beer until we found the core range. Once we'd done that, we were happy to go ahead, and we went big. We went from 100 litres to a 3,000 litre SSV kit overnight. We were looking for a property for about a year and a half. We actually were originally looking in Durham, but then we decided to go to the big craft beer scene within our area which is Newcastle. And we found a building that was perfect for us in a place called Hoults Yard. It was the oldest pottery, I believe, in the world, but now it's a design district. And there was an old rail yard building that was split level. So a third of it was raised by about a metre, which was ideal because today that’s our customer zone. It’s the taproom, and then we've got an all-glass front looking out on the entire brewery operation. We just went in all guns blazing with grand plans and just hoped to get to where we needed to be. The first three years hampered the sales growth because of what we've had to deal with, with Covid and Brexit then essentially the Great Depression with the issues with Russia. So this year has really been huge. Things are just growing worryingly, but in a very positive way. And we've got our foundations now. And we're really looking to strive and move forward to become a big national brand.”

So you launched almost exactly as Covid hit. How did that affect you?

“Neither of us have ever worked commercially in the brewing scene before. So we were learning as we went. And the fortunate thing for us is that we were very agile. We didn't have any preconceptions and we didn't actually have any casks, or kegs packaged, which obviously was a huge problem for many other brewers who had hundreds and hundreds of kegs just sitting in a warehouse, which couldn't get used. We basically turned everything to online. So we launched something called FCBC Now, which was similar to the Amazon Prime offering that was going around. We did it locally through our webshop. Order by 11, and you will have it on the same day. That became a big help for us. We didn’t actually have our first pub account for the first year of trading, which is just crazy. But a lot of the volume was actually going to export. And then we picked up a few things with Beer52, and then we did a lot through the webshop.”

What is the ethos behind the business?

“Full Circle has two meanings. The first one is, my family are in the wine business. I worked in the wine business and their parents both ran pubs. So we've gone ‘full circle’. So that was the nice family link. But then the other thing was a promise to become fully sustainable. So as an independent family business, we are super sustainable on a wine side. But we couldn't claim that in a rented building in Newcastle. So over the three years, we've not really pushed anything through on that, because it's been very difficult to do that. We've just been trying to survive and grow. And now this year, we've got big plans to really work towards sustainability. So we've linked up with a decarbonisation software company called Zero. They've linked up with maybe five or six breweries, but they're getting more and more on board. It basically allows us to measure our carbon usage.

And it's very impressive, it integrates with all of our systems, and it gives you a true carbon usage report, monthly and yearly. So that then gives us the knowledge to know where we can move forward and how we can essentially either reduce our carbon footprint, but also offset it. So we've been in talks with offsetting companies where we can then start looking at lots of different things to invest into to offset. And we're also looking at the reduction strategies. We've just bought a nitrogen generator, that's going to reduce our CO2 usage considerably. And especially with the CO2 prices rising so high in December last year, it's a cost saving. The goal is to become net zero in 10 years. So 2033 is our target.”

So sustainability is moving back in to focus for you?

“We couldn't really invest back at the start in things like nitrogen generators because we were just focusing on surviving and growing. It was really difficult for us. But now we're in that big growth phase, we really want to push that forward. My big plan this year is all around sustainability, health and well-being and then trying to broaden community engagement. We've done a lot locally. But we've never done anything nationally, and we want to continue doing it locally, but we were thinking about who can we partner with to really make an impact on a national level, and we're about to partner with the Marine Conservation Society (MCS).

Full Circle has two meanings. The first one is, my family are in the wine business. I worked in the wine business and their parents both ran pubs. So we've gone ‘full circle’. So that was the nice family link. But then the other thing was a promise to become fully sustainable.

The aim is that we can ideally seal bigger deals by doing collaboration with the MCS, and then hopefully it'll benefit them and us. It’s really important to me because the sea is in such a bad place. And we can do something on a local level with beach cleanups, and because we're Northumberland, there's a huge amount of those near us. But we also want to put money towards other projects around wildlife. And the MCS has the best initiatives for us from a national perspective over anyone else. So there’s that, coupled with the sustainability initiatives that we're really pushing for this year, and we'll be releasing an impact report in the next month about where we want to be. One of the things that we've been working really hard on, is our efficiencies, and how to reduce energy costs. And to get more beer out on the same batch without affecting quality.

We're also looking at smart plugs, which use AI to understand where you're using energy, where you're losing energy, and how it can be best utilised. Grid Imp is one of them, for example, and they use AI and bring in all these plugs that work on big three phase systems, and then say, for example, the hot liquor tank is on all night. But if you turn it off for four hours, you'll only lose two degrees. And it will be back up to normal as of 7am when you need it.”

How do you ensure Full Circle stands out in such a crowded market?

“When people ask us, ‘what's your USP?’, it's really difficult to give them that when there's 1000s of breweries often doing the same things. I think now we have those USPS in what I've just talked about, but the thing that I've always said is, you're only as good as your last beer. Ultimately, we release four new beers every month. And they always have to be great. If they're not up to scratch, you just can't put them out there. It's all about brand building. Brand comes first, over profits, as far as I'm concerned, because if you can build a solid brand, you'll stand the test of time. I think we've got a wonderful brewing team. I've got a cracking team on my side with everything else. And everyone's very busy, but very happy at the same time, which is really important to me.”

Continued on page 41

You recently won the Community Engagement award at the SIBA Business Awards for the second year in a row, tell us a bit more about the way you work with local people.

“One thing that we did last year, which I believe the reason why we won, was that we started looking at the design departments in Universities. We do produce, essentially, one new design every week. And it's quite hard for us to always be doing that whilst we're growing. So we figured, why don't we look at building someone's portfolio who's just about to come out of University, we'll pay whoever wins, and it's a really fun project for students to do. And the benefit is the beers go around the world. We've linked up with Northumbria University to do that. And then we've just been put on Sunderland University’s syllabus. We review them in house. And if there's 100 designs and we like all 100, we'll take them all and pay them for it. If we only like five, then they're the ones who get through. That has worked out really nicely for us. Some of the other projects we've done include the Golden Dooper launch. We create Dooper once a year on our birthday, it’s a double Looper, which gets really good hype. And we decided two years ago to do 20 golden cans, and whoever finds the Golden Dooper, gets invited down here in January to the brewery for a big Dooper day where they get lots of prizes. Another thing we did last year was that there were issues in Newcastle City Centre, and they created something called Newcastle Street Watch for women to feel safer. Unfortunately, there were a lot of predators out of the streets at the time. So we did a huge fundraiser and we generated about £10,000, which was wonderful. So we put a huge portion of that towards Newcastle Street Watch, which allowed them to get the vital things they needed to really bolster that up.”

As well as your taproom do you have any plans to expand your direct retail side?

“Yes I do. My plan in the next month or two is to increase our bar offering in two places, one in the city centre of Newcastle and one on the coast. That's something that we should be doing. We need to get a better presence in certain areas and stop big beer from taking all the sales. North Brewing has always been the brewery that we want it to be. We've always wanted to strive to be more like North. And ultimately, they started with bars. And it's obviously a very good idea, as long as you can run them properly.”

You have done quite a lot to support the relief efforts in Ukraine, how did that come about?

“We actually were speaking to Varvar [Ukranian brewery] well before the issues with Russia. We'd already organised the date for them to come, which was the day they actually came. Luckily, they still managed to come. So that was already pre-booked in. And we've met them at another event, and go on and then we organised the collaboration. And that obviously makes some money for them. So we donated quite a lot of money from all the proceeds of that beer. And then oddly enough on Hoults Yard where we are there's a charity that was working closely with Ukraine. One of the ladies there was Ukrainian, and her brother was killed in battle the week before. So the sad thing was, that we invested our money into tourniquetes. That was the thing that they desperately needed. Two of our team, not that far back, actually have Ukrainian blood. So that was very important to them.”

Quality assured performance guaranteed

KETTLE FININGS

Compac CG, Breakbright tablets

YEAST NUTRIENTS

Yeastlife O, Yeastlife Extra, Servomyces

BEER CLARIFICATION

Proto ne, Protosol, Vic ne, Liquid Isinglass, Alpha oc Paste

FOAM STABILISERS

Drifoam, Foamaid, Allfoam

PVPP/SILICA GELS

Alphaclar (PVPP), Britesorb (Silica hydrogel)

ENZYMES

Betaglucanase, Alpha amylase, ALDC, Aromazyme

ANTI FOAMS

Foamsol

ANTI- OXIDANTS

Vicant

IMPROVE PROCESS EFFICIENCY REDUCE BEER LOSSES

REDUCE PROCESS COST

IMPROVE PRODUCT QUALITY

What investments are you making in the business this year?

“Zero is quite an expensive software to use, the decarbonisation software, so that is a big element of the tech side for us. Because until you can see your true usage, you can't do anything about this. There's lots of companies claiming to be carbon neutral, and they're not, they don't do offsetting. So they'll never be carbon neutral. And it's a big thing. I want to be the poster child for our parent company, because they have electric cars, solar panels, turbines, all this stuff. But these are all reduction plans. So whilst they're doing great things, from a reduction standpoint, they're not doing any offsetting. This is a big problem at the minute, people can claim carbon neutrality, because no one has any structured idea of what that means. We're hopefully going to start working with a company called Klimate in Denmark. They basically build a portfolio for offsetting – so it might be $30 a tonne if you want to invest in forestation, or $900 a tonne to invest in natural air technology. In Iceland, which means this can be powered by renewable energy, there are huge warehouses with open rooms with huge fans, which basically pull all the natural air in from the atmosphere, decarbonise it on site, and then pump it back – so that's the opposite end of the cost scale. And what Klimate do is build a portfolio of things that you're offsetting with. So, we probably can't afford the natural air solutions right now. But there's lots of other things in between.”

What do you see as the main challenges for the UK’s independent craft beer sector?

“Our main challenge is making sure we can facilitate our customers at the minute. The biggest challenge is keeping costs down. Because with our growth this year, we may need to look at costs at the end of the year, only because duty prices will be going much higher. So for us, currently, it's great. But in 12 months’ time, we could be I don't know, it could be it could be an extra £3 or £4 per litre on duty. So we're trying to find ways in which we can reduce prices without affecting any beer quality. It's been our vision from the start. A lot of breweries as they grow, just always reduce the price every year by X amount, and make it slightly less flavoursome. Some people won't notice this, because it's a gradual process. The tricky thing was for us not to do that. Yeah. So I think it's the price hikes that are the biggest thing for us - across everything from fuel to gas to electric to grain to hops. We're looking at starting to re-pitch our own yeasts, which is going to make a big cost saving for us, which we didn't do before. Also maybe another issue for us is the lack of off-trade at the moment. It's reduced quite considerably. For us anyway. We're selling a lot more to on-trade. And that's partly because of our routes to market and our branding now. The off-trade has taken a hit in the last year and I do believe that's due to all of the global issues and the fact that people don't have as much money, and supermarkets have more beer at better prices.”

Our main challenge is making sure we can facilitate our customers at the minute. The biggest challenge is keeping costs down. Because with our growth this year, we may need to look at costs at the end of the year, only because duty prices will be going much higher.

Who do you most admire in the craft beer sector and why?

“I think Moonwake is one, we've just done a collab with them, and they have a videographer and they came back to us with this video and it was just incredible. And their beers are great. Their brand looks a little bit like ours, which is concerning, but I think Moonwake is the one to watch for sure. I think they're wonderful. And then I would look to the local scene in Newcastle. There's 70-odd breweries in Northumberland and it's a relatively small population for that many breweries. And the likes of Almasty and Two by Two are doing such good beers. I really rave about them. I think one from London, Ansbach & Hobday, they’re really doing great things, but I think everyone knows that anyway. But it does make me sad. When I spoke to them, they said, ‘Oh we can do full van runs of cask within two square miles of us’. That would be for us about 100 square miles! Then one that I really rate that isn't in the UK is Prism - they're from Montpellier, France. We did a collab with them a year ago at the Montpellier Beer Festival, and they're coming back tomorrow to do one with us. Their beers are just great.”

Positive steps towards a carbon neutral future.

While glass has always been infinitely recyclable, in the sustainable world we now live in, that’s not enough. We’ve made achieving carbon neutrality our aim, which demands a lot from us.

In turn, we are demanding more from our supply chain, one that is already ahead of the pack, achieving some of the lowest carbon emissions and with plans for further ultra-low carbon initiatives and investigating the use of hydrogen-powered furnaces.

We are now a climate positive workforce, offsetting the carbon footprint – and more besides – of our entire team, and we will shortly be a carbon neutral business.

As a business, we can’t do everything, but we must do something.