Deep Creek owe more than $4 million
New product promises drunkenness cure. Assaults at Dunedin festival make international headlines. Contact Energy's CO2 solution. Great new beer venue in Palmerston North. Feral pig's drunken rampage.
Welcome to another edition of Friday Night Beers, friends.
We start with an update on Deep Creek Brewing’s liquidation last week and the fact they owe more than $4 million.
The first report from liquidator Rodgers Reidy noted that Deep Creek Brewing Operations Ltd owed unsecured creditors around $3.5 million. They also owed ASB $603,845.
Money owed to secured creditors, which included fellow brewery Cassels, was not available at the time of the report.
The liquidators said they would hold a public auction to sell off plant and equipment with a book value of $866,065 — mostly comprised of the brewery hardware — they’d installed a million-dollar brewery just under two years ago.
Deep Creek was owed $540,906 by debtors and had inventory on-hand of approximately $300,000. Staff were owed $116,000.
Liquidator Derek Ah Sam told Pursuit of Hoppiness that the $3.5 million owed to unsecured creditors included $2.6 million in shareholder advances, meaning around $900,000 was owed to third parties, including a number of industry players such as Gladfield Malt, NZ Hops Ltd, Froth Tech, Konvoy Kegs, Brewers Coop, Brewshop, Brewtown, Clayton Hops, Freestyle Hops, Craft Beer Capital, The Beer Spot, Rapid Labels and many others.
It’s a truly rough situation, and I feel for everyone involved, especially the shareholders who had so much skin in the game, which they won’t get back by the looks of it.
One of Deep Creek’s founders, and their very public face, Scott Taylor, posted this week to social media, and noted the level of shareholder input:
“The company I have helped grow from the ground up, went into liquidation. I've been through all the range of emotions and will continue to do so for a while. It has been more than a quarter of my life with this brand and these people.
“First of all, I want to say thank you to Jarred and Paul, who are the founding fathers of Deep Creek, without whom this brewery never would have existed. Thanks for taking a chance on me all those years ago. What a journey!
“Secondly, thanks to Hamish Ward, the genius behind our beers, and the reason we were able to be so successful. Without you, we would never have achieved the heights we did. You're a legend.
“Thanks to the shareholders, who believed in the brewery to invest and make this thing work as well as it did for so long.”
We’re not alone in this …
Going back to Epic liquidation I’ve been approached by numerous media organisations for my view on the state of the industry. The latest of these reckons will appear in the Sunday Star-Times this weekend.
In many of those interviews and stories, I’ve always pointed out that what’s happening here is in no way unique to New Zealand. And in some ways, our beer industry is in better shape than many others.
The Guardian brought things into perspective with their look at the state of the Australian brewing scene:
“The last six months have bitten a lot of people, particularly smaller breweries that are mum and dad operators who had mortgaged their house and don’t have access to shareholders.”
Trouble brewing: Australian brewers struggle in ‘craft beer recession’ | The Guardian
Wilding launch tonight
A quick reminder for anyone in the Wellington area that the launch of Emerson’s Wilding is on tonight at The Tasting Room. The beer is supposed to be amazing!
We’ve covered the discovery of Wilding previously, but this week Ryan Carville from Froth Tech was talking about it on Radio NZ:
Free flagon scheme launches
I’m forever being told off in our house for forgetting the shopping bags — and fair enough I’m useless at thinking ahead.
I’m a little bit better when it comes to buying beer from taprooms or filleries, but there’s plenty of times when I’ve been somewhere and wished I had a bottle so I could grab a takeaway. And of course, I wouldn’t want to pay for another bottle to go with the small of army of them in the cupboard at home.
That’s why I’m a big fan of the flagon rental scheme launched this week by Again Again.
Dozens of high-profile breweries around the country, including Garage Project, Parrotdog and Emerson’s, are involved in a scheme that provides customers with free, returnable, 1-litre glass flagons for takeaway beer purchased at taprooms and filleries.
Backed by government funding, it’s like borrowing a library book — it’s free but if you’re late with the return you get a fine.
I spoke to Eddie Gapper of Altitude Brewing in Queenstown about it and he’s a big fan.
“The cause is absolutely worth it,” he says. “We’ve always been keen on returnable systems, that circular model, and we’ve always filled containers in the taproom.
“What intrigued us about this scheme is that it had the support of so many big industry players — and we wanted to be part of a broader scheme to drive awareness and talk up the value of this.”
Beer of the Week No 1
It feels like it’s been a resurgent year for amber/darker lagers and it’s a trend that I’m totally here for. Eddyline’s Amber Lager is a direct salute to Mexico’s Negra Modelo, although I would say it is not as sweet as my (long time ago) memory of that beer. It’s certainly rich. The malts offer some almost-chocolate hints and nuttiness; there’s some apple-pear fruitiness and the rice lifts the palate weight. The hops are deeply built into the structure of the beer, so they don’t crackle at the end, but instead linger in a firm way. Really good experience.
Two assaults at Dunedin festival
It was a bad week for New Zealand’s reputation as a good place to drink beer with the twin assaults at the Dunedin Craft Beer & Food Festival making international news.
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