BrewDog, one of the largest craft breweries in the UK, has canceled a contract brewing agreement with craft brewery Yeastie Boys from New Zealand.
Stu McKinlay and his partner Sam Possenniskie started the cooperation with the Scottish brewer in 2015 as a way to serve their beer better and fresher to European markets. The agreement was not only meant to widen distribution but also to boost sales of the microbrewer, who does not operate an own brewery. “We were planning to triple sales this year,” McKinlay said in an interview.
Now, BrewDog has terminated the agreement because the Scots need all capacity for their own beers. “We have a limited number of smaller tanks, which we have historically offered up for contract brews. With the demand we are currently experiencing, we require access to our entire capacity, and are therefore unable to offer a contract brewing service to other craft breweries unfortunately,” says Sarah Warman, BrewDog’s spokeswoman.
Yeastie Boys is now left with 4 months remaining to find another brewery for their beers before brewing at the BrewDog facility in Ellon/Scotland is stopped. “My focus has to switch from continuing to build the brand we’ve established to finding a brewery that can meet all our requirements. We’re trying to do that in four months,” says founder McKinlay. “To put that timeframe into context, it was two years between first talking to BrewDog (and some other UK breweries) and finally brewing at Ellon.”
Yeastie Boys was established by beer activists Stu McKinlay and Sam Possenniskie in 2008 as an independent brewing company based in Wellington, New Zealand. Both founders worked only part-time and had day jobs in unrelated industries until 2015,when the company successfully collected enough money through crowdfunding to expand the business overseas. The beers in New Zealand are commercially produced under a contract brewing agreement at the Invercargill Brewery in Invercargill, New Zealand.
