Breweries left hanging as distributor goes bust
Hop And Vine and associated company ABV Beverages go into liquidation with $700,000 owed. But the story does an uplifting bright side. Kingfisher gets fruity. Plus four fresh hop beers reviewed!
Welcome to the first Friday in April beer fans.
We start with some grim news: the precarious state of the beer industry was revealed again this week with the liquidation of distribution company Hop And Vine, and an associated entity ABV Beverages.
The liquidation of the two companies has left several breweries out of pocket to the tune of tens of thousands of dollars. Most of the breweries, and a large number of wineries, will recoup little of their lost income — judging by the published accounts.
Those breweries impacted include: Three Boys, Emerson’s, Duncan’s, Shining Peak, Laughing Bones, Black Sands, Burkes, Volstead, Waitoa and Brothers.
The liquidator’s report on Hop And Vine, published on the Companies Office website said:
“With the changes in the economy the Company has been struggling with working capital. A new company was set up in September 2024, this was a venture with another distributor. This company is also in Liquidation. [Hop And Vine] continued to own plant and equipment but trading was done from the new company ABV Beverages Limited (In Liquidation). Directors sought professional advice and decided to place the company into Voluntary Liquidation.”
Christchurch-based Hop And Vine, owned by Terry Mitchell and his wife Carol, owes Inland Revenue an estimated $5,000 in GST and unsecured creditors an estimated $80,000.
ABV Beverages, jointly owned by Hop And Vine and Auckland-based Beer Fridge just six months ago, owe unsecured creditors around $700,000 and the liquidator estimates they’ll be able to repay $213,000 of that leaving a shortfall of $487,000.
The liquidator’s report on ABV said:
“With a difficult trading environment since its inception, the Company struggled with working capital. A number of key brands which were targeted to be distributed were not converted to suppliers.”
It’s the fourth (or fifth depending on how you count these two) distributor to go under in recent times after Beer NZ, Quench, and Beertique. Each time breweries have been left massively out of pocket.
Craig Hebblethwaite of Black Sands said he was close to $30,000 out of pocket and the liquidation came close to forcing them out of business.
“Thirty grand is huge for a business with two employees.
“That's enough to potentially cripple us. Luckily we did well this summer and we’ve tripled the size of the business in the past three years but if this happened to us even a year ago, we would have folded.
“Even now I’m worried about paying my excise tax — I might not have enough money to pay that which means I'll have to get another bank loan.
“It’s hard enough keeping your head above the water in this industry, at this time, without people shafting you.”
Craig said he’d signed with Hop And Vine because of their solid reputation formed over 25 years.
“We’ve been with them for one year now and since day dot there were odd dealings, changed communications, false promises.
“And then late last year, they just stopped paying.”
Craig had set up a payment plan with Hop And Vine and was expecting an instalment to be paid this week.
“The money didn't come through. So on Wednesday, I started texting, calling … no response. And they liquidated at 5pm that day.
“Even 12 days ago they were ordering stock and I wasn’t going to fulfill the order until I got payment, but Terry assured me ‘mate, you'll get your money’.
“I’m disappointed because I trusted him.”
Ralph Bungard from Three Boys has been through this before and was stoic about the realities that face both brewers and distributors. He had some sympathy for Hop And Vine, saying they were victims of “unscrupulous” people in the hospitality industry who didn’t pay their bills.
He also believed the new business became an anchor.
“There is that thing of over-expansion but in some ways, you have to expand to make a living.
“Terry’s had 25 years of Hop And Vine, and it’s this latest move that seems to have put a spanner in the works.”
But Bungard said there were too many rogue businesses who refused to pay bills.
“It's a broken system that we deal with in New Zealand. There’s no simple recourse for going after people who don’t pay their bills.
“If someone owes you $500, $1000, you cannot chase them because it costs you more to chase them than it does to just let it slide.
“And that compounds for the likes of someone like Hop And Vine because we are dealing with some businesses who are very good at being shitters.
“There are unscrupulous businesses at the top of this food chain — the bars that don't pay their bills on time, the bars that don't pay at all.
“All those relatively small bills accumulate, and they flow down to us, the brewers.
“And there’s zero recourse. We are the ones taking the hits on this through no fault of our own. But that money has gone into someone's pocket.”
Three Boys is a secured creditor of both liquidated companies but Bungard doesn’t expect that will help them.
“It doesn’t mean anything — we might get a few cents in the dollar if we’re lucky.
While Three Boys will lose a “huge amount of money” Bungard says 21 years in the industry means they can survive this.
“We learned not to be in a position where a scenario like this will tip us over.”
Dan Hously of Beer Fridge said he was still working through the ramifications of the liquidation but added: “I can say that Beer Fridge and its 3PL services are unaffected by the liquidation of Hop & Vine and ABV.”
The Silver Lining
There’s the positive side of all this which Craig wanted to emphasise.
“When I saw the email from the liquidators, I freaked out.
“I had 24 hours to get my stock out, otherwise it goes to the liquidator for auctioning. But I'm in a different city. Do I have to fly down? And even if I got it out where do I put the stuff?
“Ralph from Three Boys came in said, ‘look, I’m on my way there now. I’ll pick up all your stuff, and I’ll store it for free in our cold storage.’
“And I don't even know this guy! It was so nice of him.”
In return, Craig went to the Auckland warehouse of ABV and sorted out all the Three Boys and Volstead stock.
And he’s been blown away by the support of the others in the industry.
“The Beer Spot came in said: ‘we’re gonna put in a big order next week and another one the next week, and we'll buy whatever stock you have’. They're doing the same with the other guys as well, I believe.
“And you know, the legendary good people like Matt at Moon Under Water said he’d pick up kegs from Three Boys and put on a keg a week until it’s gone.
“The same thing with Andi [Hickey] at Pomeroy’s and I’ve never even met Andi.
“Jamie from Beers Beers Beers says ‘I'll take eight kegs now if you need’.
“This was the kind of help I really needed. So to know that when push comes to shove those people have my back is an amazing feeling.
“We won't make a full financial recovery, but what I will lose won’t sink the boat and that’s thanks to these people, just selflessly offering to help out in whatever way they can.
“There’s bars in Auckland offering to pay all my accounts upfront early this month so I have cash flow. Northern Line, Vultures, Beer Spot 16 Tun.
“It really made me so happy.”
There you go. If you want a list of beer companies to buy off in the short term, and bars to frequent … you have them!
Beer of the Week No 1
I had a really tough time deciding which beer to put first this week because everything I’ve had has been excellent … so trust me, while there’s an order to what follows this week, there’s not really a pecking order!
But also I couldn’t resist the urgency with which Hoppiness chief review Tim Newman emailed me about Eddyline’s Hoptimus Prime Fresh Hop West Coast IPA, so I decided to make Tim’s choice the first beer of the week.
Tim Newman — Fresh hop season is well and truly upon us now, with a deluge of fresh releases landing day by day. It’s been less a case of hunting them out and more one of deciding what to choose… The beginning of the season usually means a lot of hazy beers in the first wave while the brights are still conditioning, but Eddyline Brewery has bucked that trend and somehow gotten this West Coast-style IPA out the door already.
Driven by the power couple of fresh Nelson Sauvin and Nectaron from Mac Hops, it delivers hugely pungent aromas of pineapple, gooseberry and tomato leaf, with sweeter mango tropicals on the end. The palate is clean and exceptionally tight, with the juicy malt and cleansing bitterness providing the perfect platform for the magnificent display of lush fresh hop goodness. With an insane drinkability to boot, I think this one is going to hang on as my favorite release long into the season. Perhaps even to the end? Wouldn’t that be remarkable…
Mac Hops celebrate 125 years
Speaking of Mac Hops, as promised last week, I finished the feature-length chat with Brent McGlashan about their 125th year farming hops in Motueka.
One of the things Brent talked about was surviving the current downturn in the hop industry, and he looked back on the golden years when Motueka used to boom with seasonal workers who came from other New Zealand cities and towns to work in the hop fields.
Beer of the Week No 2
I mentioned recently how impressed I’ve been with Heyday beers. Well, the Cuba Steet brewery in Wellington has done it again with a fresh hop sour.
Yep, a fresh hop sour.
Specifically: a Mojito Sour hopped with fresh Motueka.
First up, this is not too sour at all. It’s tangy and dry and incredibly drinkable.
The lime-like Motueka fresh hop character is present but restrained and you get a herbal, oily, resinous quality from the fresh hops that help steer it towards a menthol mintiness.
Highly recommended for lovers of hoppy sours. And if that’s not your thing, do try their Pacifica fresh-hopped Pilsner, which is grippy and clean and lovely.
Cult Aussie brewery in liquidation
Molly Rose, the cult indie brewery from Collingwood in Melbourne, has gone into liquidation due to what they called “increasing operational costs and declining consumer demand”.
Director Nic Sandery, in a statement this week, said the decision was made after looking at all available options with key stakeholders. “Unfortunately, despite our best efforts, no viable alternative could be found,” he said.
Several factors contributed to the decision. Delays in the company's hospitality expansion project, coupled with a 40% increase in construction costs and rapidly rising interest rates, created a challenging financial environment. Efforts to mitigate these challenges through cost reductions across wages, production, and logistics were ultimately insufficient in the face of declining consumer sentiment and the ongoing cost-of-living crisis.
Molly Rose is temporarily closed while the liquidator assesses all options, including expressions of interest to acquire the business.
Sandery was hopeful of doing a deal to buy back the brewery under a new ownership structure. “While there is no guarantee of success, we are hopeful that we can negotiate an agreement that will allow us to reopen and continue serving our community with great beer and food.”
And Queensland’s Currumbin Valley Brewing have shut their doors after the founders were unable to find a buyer for the Gold Coast brewery. Co-founder Peter Wheldon told The Crafty Pint they’d been working with business brokers for some time, and while a last-minute sale was a possibility last week, it fell through.
It means what was initially a temporary closure of the brewery taproom is now permanent, with Wheldon saying they were unable to keep trading.
Dusty’s Beer of the Week
After a month of no Kiwi brews it was immaculate timing to stroll into the local — Shining Peak — and sample the fresh hop edition of their Detained & Fabulous Bright IPA (6.5%) straight outta Freestyle Hops in Upper Moutere. The brew itself is hopped with Motueka, with an upfront presence of pineapple with secondary lime lemon & subtle floral notes. An effervescent carb and crisp asf mouthfeel complete a crackin start to my 2025 fresh hop ventures. Hoppy Friday all! — Dusty
New World Beer & Cider Awards Freshen Up
There’s some big changes coming at this year’s New World Beer & Cider Awards.
It will be my 10th year involved with these awards and this year promises to be most intriguing yet.
Last year we tested a concept called “weird and wonderful” in a very low-key way and this year we’re introducing that as new category — a celebration of beers that embrace unexpected or unconventional ingredients, offering an element of surprise, creativity, or innovation.
To an extent, the success of Garage Project’s Pickle Beer in the Top 30 last year cemented the idea that drinkers love to try new and intriguing drops.
There’s an added bonus for breweries entering this category, with the competition offering the flexibility of entering unpackaged samples for judging.
This allows brewers enter small-batch creations with the knowledge that if an entry is selected in the Top 25, it must then meet all standard packaging and criteria as outlined in the official terms & conditions.
On that note, yes the Top 30 is being reduced to a Top 25, with the next best 25 entries being Highly Commended. The winners will be announced in August-September, which is later than the previous May-June window which I think works way better for promoting beer.
The competition is open to breweries and cidermakers of all sizes, so long as you can supply supermarket-compliant product, and entrants don’t need to be an existing New World or Foodstuffs supplier to enter.
Entries close at 5pm on 24th April.
Beer of the Week No 3
Sawmill’s Fresh Hop Riwaka Hazy IPA is fast becoming a fresh hop benchmark beer, a bit like Hop Federation’s Green Limousine.
And this draws a clear line in the sand. Super pungent, grapefruit, dank, green … all the descriptors you’d like. There’s an underlying jet fuel character that is Riwaka’s signature, derived from the high levels of Myrcene … I think.
(On that note drinking Urbanaut’s Terpene beers — the latest one, Dankenstein, is fantastic! — is a good way to appreciate the qualities that terpenes bring).
Anyway, the intensity on this one from the crew at Matakana is right up there and if I was scaling fresh hop impact on a score out of 10, I’d give this a 9.5.
Indian classic gets fruity make-over
We talked last week about fruited beers as the next big thing for the industry.
And now Kingfisher — something I would have called a stationary brand (in that it never seemed to chang) — is going full-on fruit with two new beers called Lemon Masala and Mango Berry Twist.
The flavours are inspired by the India’s street food scene said the press release.
Certainly the colours are very bright!
70-year-old beer can fetches more than $100,000
Americans might be worried about paying more for their beer under Trump’s new tariffs but that hasn’t stopped one man from paying over $100,000 for an old beer can.
A 1950s Chief Oshkosh beer can sold at auction for $111,150, according to a press release from Massachusetts-based Morean Auctions. This sale set a new record for the highest price paid for a piece of beer memorabilia.
Originally produced by Wisconsin’s now-defunct Oshkosh Brewing Company, Chief Oshkosh beer hasn’t been brewed since the early 1970s. According to Morean Auctions, the recently-sold can is the only example of its kind in existence and is in near-perfect condition.
Dan Morean, founder of the auction house, posted about the can on Facebook while pre-bidding was underway, cataloging its journey in ownership since the early 1950s. The post reportedly inspired the winning bidder, a Wisconsin man, to bid on the item.
“It was both thrilling and validating to see the price surpass $100,000. These old beer cans were never meant to be collectibles,” Morean said. “They were designed to be disposed of, which makes them incredibly rare. Collectors have had a deep passion for them since the 1970s, and it’s gratifying to see them gain the recognition they truly deserve.”
If you’re not collecting your beer cans, make sure you recycle them!
Catch you next week
Michael