Townshend enters crowdfunding arena

Beer legend celebrates 40 years in the game. Label design winners: does the beer inside match the artwork on the outside? Sunshine Brewing: "we're not a craft brewery, we're a regional brewery".

Welcome to Friday beer lovers,

Huge news out of Motueka today with much-loved Townshend Brewery taking the crowdfunding route to grow their business.

Motueka-based Townshend are looking to raise around $500,000 to fund growth and are taking expressions of interest on the platform Equitise.

Express Your Interest – Townshend Brewery – Nelson NZ (equitise.com)

It’s quite some journey for the former one-man operation.

Martin Townshend started the brewery in 2005 and won Champion Brewery at the NZ Beer Awards in 2014.

But he came close to packing it all in a shortly after that when he tried to leverage the Champion Brewery status and push growth via an ill-fated contract brewing deal at Tuatara.

Townshend pulled back and focused on his local area — moving from Moutere to a new brewery in Motueka, just behind the hugely popular Toad Hall cafe in 2016.

With a general manager, Antony Burke, coming on board and their Sutton Hoo Amber Ale winning a Top-30 spot in the 2021 New World Beer & Cider Awards they started to push back on to the big stage and get some national exposure.

They recently moved the entire range to cans.

Now they are ready for further expansion.

“The key reason for raising the money is to help accelerate growth,” Burke said.  “The business is currently profitable so moving forward, whatever we raise will be put to good use expanding the business.”

To grow the business meant either selling a stake in the brewery, funding it themselves or going the crowdfunding route.

“When we looked at crowd funding we realised a brewery our size hadn’t done that for a while.”

In terms of small brewery crowdfunding, the most recent example is Three Sisters which successfully raised $520,000 last year. The amount Townshend are aiming for is a long way from the multi-million dollar campaigns run by Parrotdog and Behemoth, who have each done three.

In their pitch to investors, Townshend noted:

• Amongst a backdrop of difficult trading conditions, the brewery has continued to grow year on year to $700k in revenue and a $126k in net profit, 18% net profit margin (FY23) coming off a strong and profitable FY22 with a 13% net profit margin.

• The new brewery was fitted with solar panels in 2018 to run the brew house. We use recycled packaging where possible and we have a 60,000L water tank that collects rain water off the building which we use for cleaning to ensure we only draw water for brewing

“We understand that success is driven by the talented and passionate individuals. We need to bring on key staff increase production, drive sales, and deliver on our expansion dreams.”

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Sunshine: we’re not craft

I recently attended Sunshine Brewing’s annual Long Lunch — a celebration of New Zealand’s longest running independent brewery.

With food prepared by celebrity chef Rex Morgan and matched to the beers created by brewer Jesse Foley, the Long Lunch is a wonderful reminder of the quality and importance of New Zealand’s smaller breweries.

In welcoming guests, part-owner Martin Jakicevic, made an interesting comment. “We don’t consider ourselves a craft brewery, we’re a regional brewery.”

The regional pride was the driver behind the creation of Sunshine in 1989 when the late Geoff Logan decided he was going to give Gisborne the regional brewery it lost when Barry’s was bought and closed by Lion.

With partner Gerry Maude, still a small shareholder in the business, he created not only a brewery that served the East Cape, but in Gisborne Gold, a beer that represented the region on a wider stage.

That Gisborne Gold retains a cult status to this day is testament as much to the love of the brewery as the beer itself, which remains one of the most flavoursome 3.8 per cent beers you can hope to find.

It’s role in the burgeoning Wellington craft beer scene at the turn of the century is reflected in the fact that Gizzy Gold is permanently on tap the city’s iconic craft beer bar, The Malthouse.

Being a true regional brewery is not just about providing your local bars and restaurants with beer, but it’s about being part of the community — integral to the community in fact.

From being a hub where people gathered in the wake of Cyclone Gabrielle to sponsoring New Zealand’s newest Olympian, surfer Saffi Vette Sunshine really embody what it means to be a part of the community.

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Beer of the week

Sunshine’s Baltic Porter was the star turn for me at the Long Lunch. Super smooth, with licks of chocolate and caramel balanced by a delicate spice from the use of rye malt. Just a little hint of bitterness balanced it out further. It went down so easily with the Middle Eastern lamb, with the sweet and spice pairing exceptionally with the food flavours. It’s as good an example as I can think of to showcase how beer can go with food so much better than wine. A red wine would have been OK with this dish, but probably would have been too acidic. The Baltic Porter worked with the food, rather than against it.

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Winners inside and out

Last week the GABS annual Label Design Awards were announced and Good George were a worthy winner with their cow-themed Milk Stout label. In this week’s epistle I’ve decided to put the best labels to a taste test to see if what’s inside the can married up to what’s outside! (Note: these are in lieu of the normal beers of the week, because a man only has so much palate-space!)