7 minute read
BAR, BEER & CELLAR
Buying in to better brews
Two brewing groups have turned to crowdfunding to expand their brewpub ventures, as well as make them more sustainable.
BREWERIES AND brewpubs have found a lot of favour across Australia in the last decade. The landscape has gone from one or two outposts in metropolitan areas and a couple of must-visit sites in tourism-heavy regional areas, to hundreds of breweries of all sizes and means. After a period of massive expansion, we are entering the next phase of the Australian brewpub scene, where businesses hone their offerings and grow their presence, as well as looking to curb their emissions.
Investing in expansive activities and more eco-friendly brewing practices can be quite an initial investment. Two discrete Victorian brewing groups have turned to crowdfunding to help finance their ambitions, as well as increase the literal buy-in from their repeat customers.
Solar panels have been added to the rooftop of 3 Ravens Thornbury
3 Ravens – Melbourne’s oldest independent brewery - launched their first ever equity campaign via Birchal in July, as the brewery expands its locations and invests in innovative, state-of-the-art sustainable technology.
The community support from the crowdfunding campaign will be used to fuel the construction of a sustainability-focused brewery upgrade at its Thornbury site. Utilising a CO2 chiller heat pump coupled with industry 4.0 technology that captures waste heat from the brewing process, the technology will allow 3 Ravens to reduce their energy consumption by over 70 per cent, drastically reducing their carbon emissions, while also reducing manufacturing costs.
Once complete, this set-up will showcase how other breweries can also reduce their carbon footprint by adopting these new processes. In order to develop and install the new technology in their current and future locations,3 Ravens has already received grants from the Manufacturing Modernisation Fund and the SmallScale Craft Grant valued at $300,000.
“The heart of our business is the award-winning beer we brew, however reducing our environmental impact in any way we can has always been a priority for us,” said Nathan Liascos, 3 Ravens’General Manager.
“We’re incredibly proud of the work that has been done to develop this new technology, and look forward to sharing our techniques, insights and technology with other brewers, independent or not.”
West Coast bound
Besides its sustainability focus, 3 Ravens plans to open a second brew-pub (the first outside of Melbourne), with construction on a Perth location planned for later this year.
“Perth is home to some of Australia’s best and most creative brewers, including a lot of members of our own team. It’s also where I grew up, so for a lot of us it’s kind of a homecoming,” said head brewer Brendan O’Sullivan.
3 Ravens head brewer Brendan O’Sullivan
“It’s a really exciting prospect to bring not only our beer to Perth, but our expertise and sustainable focus to the local community and hopefully showcase how other breweries can also reduce their carbon footprint.”
From humble beginnings in the warehouse of an engineering business 18 years ago, to now producing six staple beers and over 25 seasonal releases each year, 3 Ravens has remained fiercely independent and held its position at the forefront of new and emerging technologies. Whether it be pioneering new styles of brewing, turning excess office space into a coworking space, or embracing the power of renewable energy, the team behind 3 Ravens has continued to lead the charge for independent brewers around the country.
-Nathan Liascos, 3 Ravens
Despite lockdowns in Melbourne extending further than anywhere else in the world, 3 Ravens still brought in $3.3M in revenue in 2021. With lockdown restrictions ending and international export markets reopening, the3 Ravens team is expecting even bigger revenue growth as they expand their brewing capacity and hospitality footprint across the nation.
The Perth location is the first of a wider expansion plan for 3 Ravens, which is also planning on expanding the space in their Thornbury bar and installing a kitchen to introduce a more substantial in-house food offering. With high demand for its beers in Sydney and Brisbane as well, the team are eyeing locations in these capital cities to offer fans the chance to drink the beer as close to the source as possible, helping reduce the impact of the supply chain on the environment.
Otway expands
Further south in Victoria, Otway Brewing Group is also turning to the Birchal platform to help crowdfund the next stage in its evolution.
Under the Otway Brewing Group umbrella lies well-known local brands and venues including Prickly Moses beer, the Great Ocean Road and Queenscliff Brewhouses, Apollo Bay and Queenscliff Gin, Nitro Vodka, and Forbidden Fruit Cider. This well-established and diverse business is growing strong and expanding into new markets – including whisky.
Prickly Moses is a well established brand for Otway Brewing Group
“Our successful history of experimentation and expansion into new ventures has helped us to identify new opportunities and quickly adapt to market demands,” explained the group’s CEO and co-founder Andrew Noseda.
“We have plans to grow rapidly. We like the idea of crowdfunding, and having our loyal customers involved. We want to give back to those who have supported us for the past 25 years.”
As part of its expansion plans, the Otway Brewing Group will build a new distillery production area at the Otway brewing facility, and commission a second large still to rapidly expand their whisky production. It is also building a new large, bonded storage warehouse, enabling the business to produce and store whisky on a larger scale.
“The Otway ranges provides the perfect environment for whisky maturation, with its abundance of lush rainwater, elevated location, and cool climate. We have been experimenting with grains, recipes, and oak maturation for three years and have produced our first whisky,” stated Noseda.
Otway Brewing’s Tastes of the Region cellar door
“We will become a major whisky producer and we are looking for crowdfunding to rapidly kickstart this journey. We invite you to be part of it!”
Sustainability is also at the core of Otway Brewing Group’s major growth plans for 2023. The business is taking steps towards becoming completely off-grid in terms of energy usage. Partly from necessity and partly from genuine concern for the environment, solar panels and rainwater tanks have been implemented at some of the facilities with future plans to incorporate wind generation and other forms of renewable energy to move to 100 per cent green energy.
-Andrew Noseda, Otway Brewing Group
Through its development plans, Otway Brewing Group anticipates solid growth expanding into new local and international markets – with the help of new investors.
“As a business, we’ve been operating for 25+ years. We actually own our Otway property. We own the implant and production equipment. We have all the knowledge we need, and the fundamentals in place. Crowdfunding will allow us to get up and running a lot quicker and bring greater volumes to the market.”
Great Ocean Road Brewhouse
The Otway Brewing Group equity crowdfunding campaign opened for Expressions of Interest in mid- October and ran for three weeks. The 3 Ravens campaign ran for a month and with the help of 320 investors raised over $540,000 – almost ten per cent over its minimum goal of $500,000.
Venues are always looking for ways to fund growth and drive customer loyalty. 3 Ravens and Otway Brewing Group have found a way to achieve both aims – increasing customer buy-in to allow patrons to really feel they are a part of the business by funding its growth.
