To use a golf analogy, Sawmill Brewing are “sneaky long”.
It’s a term used for golfers, who, without apparent effort, hit the ball a long way. And so it is with Sawmill — with minimal fuss they are quietly one of New Zealand’s most successful breweries.
“Yeah, I think that’s a fair,” says Sawmill owner and brewer Mike Sutherland in response.
We’re talking golf because getting Sawmill beer on tap in a variety of golf clubs is just one of the low-key ways Sawmill — celebrating their 20th birthday — continue to grow and grow.
At least two of Auckland’s more prestigious clubs — Titirangi and Muriwai — have Sawmill on tap and the Matakana brewery are rapt to have picked up taps at both Mangawhai and Waipu, which are both in their catchment area north of Auckland.
Kirsty McKay, Sutherland’s partner in life and business, is particularly pleased by getting their beer on tap at Waipu where her father is a member and the McKay family helped the seaside links become the well-recognised course it is today.
“I am particularly thrilled about Waipu as my grandparents helped found it. Different families in the area took responsibility for clearing each hole, my family were the ninth! I suspect they liked being handy to the bar.”
Sutherland says a recent tasting Sawmill did at Waipu helped convince the club to move on from their standard big brewery offering.
“We’re in a few golf clubs and it’s funny because it’s probably the retired 70-year-olds that have always been like ‘I don’t know about this flowery craft beer’.
“But we did a night up at Waipu and we had around 30 members and took them through a bunch of the beers and these guys were like, ‘oh yeah, I really like this’. Nimble [a 2.5% pale ale] was a big one for them because they still want to have three or four beers after their game and then go home.
“So by the end of that they had all come full circle because there was quite a bit of pushback from some of these older guys that they have to keep their Speight’s and Lion Red on. But by the end they had turned around and said, ‘you can have all the taps’. That was quite cool.”
Sutherland says golf clubs — there are almost 400 in New Zealand — is just one area where there’s “growth potential” for craft.
“Golf obviously has had a massive surge of popularity, especially with young people, like my [teenage] son.”
But as the tasting revealed, there’s also the element of “continual education” — not just about flavours, but also ownership and provenance.
“For these guys, what they really loved was that we’re a New Zealand independent beer company. So that’s kind of what the message we need to get out — we need Kiwis to drink Kiwi beer.”
Sustainability the backbone of Sawmill
In terms of “story”, another important facet of Sawmill’s reach is their B Corp status — they are the only New Zealand brewery with this international stamp of sustainability approval.
It’s seen them win the Sustainability Trophy at the New Zealand Beer Awards for five years running. While they are super proud of what they’ve achieved they don’t necessarily make a huge deal out of it. They publicise where they can, but they are the epitome of the humble brag in the literal sense.
They generate some of their own energy through solar panels and will soon have a biogas recapture system. They catch a million litres of rainwater annually, feed cattle with their spent grain and have planted hops and thousands of native trees.
“The craft industry is naturally innovative, but it’s always been so product-focused,” says Sutherland. “Now we focus on being innovative to the consumer, and that’s more than just about product. It’s about who you are and how you operate as a business and the culture that you maintain by choosing to go down that path.
“And I think that’s really important. It gives you a lot of backbone.
“For lots of consumers now, people are looking for a reason to believe in a brand or a product. So if we can support that movement or those people, then that’s a kind of a competitive advantage, even though we don’t use it intentionally as one. It’s just how we want to run our business.
“Obviously you’ve still got to have a bloody good product but you’ve got to pull on the heartstrings somehow.”
The other thing Sawmill have done is to be themselves, run their own race. Sutherland says that’s a lot to do with their history.
When Sawmill started life in a shed adjacent to the Leigh Sawmill Cafe in 2004 — owned by Peter and Decima Freckleton — craft wasn’t even a thing.
When Sutherland and McKay took over the business in 2009 the craft bubble was starting to expand.
“But even then, we were a bit isolated so we just set about doing everything our way.
“All the noise used to be in Wellington. And in Auckland we were the only brewery north of the harbour bridge.
“Hallertau had just been going a little while by the time we got into it, and you had Epic in Auckland, but there wasn’t much else happening up here, so we just found our own way. There wasn’t anyone to copy.
“We made a lot of mistakes from probably not being more aware, but in the long run, it’s meant that we’ve approached it very independently and just forged our own way, whether that be with styles or how we choose to brand our products. And as the market has developed and matured, that’s been to our advantage, I think.”
Early, one of the biggest risks was creating their own sales and marketing team.
“We knew that we had to drive volume and scale to survive. So we took the risk of developing our own sales team into nationwide team. It’s not a massive team, but we cover the whole country.
“We have our own marketing team, we do our own logistics and customer service. So we’re not reliant on anyone else.”
Continual Growth
That investment, and the quality of the beer, of course, sees Sawmill on to their third brewhouse in 15 years — growing from a 1200-litre kit that was converted from dairy equipment, to a 2500-litre brewhouse and now they are up to 5000 litres, having purchased the old Deep Creek brewery when that business went into liquidation.
The brewhouse was installed mid-year — just in time for summer, says Sutherland — and was complemented by a packaging line upgrade for automatic filling of 6-packs.
“We’re pretty happy with how it’s going we definitely needed it by the summer — it’s getting a good thrashing at the moment.”
What the brewery offers on top of sheer capacity is more automation and better extraction.
“When your margin’s been throttled like it has over the last few years, you just need to get much smarter and focused on becoming more and more efficient in everything you do such as less waste.”
While margins might be getting throttled, Sawmill is still in growth mode, which seems to defy the market sentiment.
Sutherland recalls the early days of the brewery when they made 20,000 litres of beer a year; “now we do that in two days”.
“We’re still growing. I think up until we had the fire, we were growing 50% year on year for about 10 years. Since then it’s been scaling down, not dramatically, but we’re still growing. Even the last couple of months we’re up 15% on last year.
“So if we can finish the year up around 15%, it’s a pretty good outcome in the current environment.”
The fire
Maybe craft brewing makes people more resilient — after all, it’s a tough industry. But Sutherland and McKay showed extraordinary bounce-back ability when a fire destroyed their practically new brewery in Matakana.
They’d only relocated there in 2016, moving away from Leigh and breaking the confusing ties with the Sawmill Cafe.
In 2019, they had to start all over again when a fire, sparked by oil on tea towels in a hot dry environment, gutted the brewery and Smoko Room restaurant and taproom.
“You wouldn’t wish it upon anyone but plenty of good things have come out of it. We have a stronger, more resilient team,” Sutherland said at the time.
“Rather than thinking that we wished it hadn’t happened we just couldn’t believe how well supported we were.
“Of course it wasn’t a happy experience but neither was it tragic. It felt completely different from what you might expect.”
“When we took over the brewery in 2010 it was just the two of us. After the fire, we were buoyed by the people we work with and that we didn’t have to rebuild on our own.”
The wider brewing community also stepped up to help, with Sawmill beers brewed at 13 other breweries around the country while they were out of action for nine months.
Unique approach to non-alc beer
Another area where Sawmill go their own way is with their non-alcoholic Bare beer — which is brewed on-site in Matakana, rather than at bStudio in Napier or Steam Brewing in Auckland, which handle nearly all the non-alc beer in the country.
On top of that, Sawmill don’t have a pastueriser, so there’s inherent risk in making a non-alc, given how susceptible they are to infection unless kept chilled all the time.
“We use a slightly different method than everyone else, and everything is tested — but it is a slightly higher risk for us, so we have to make sure we dot all our i’s and cross all our t’s.”
That attention to detail and their commitment to sustainability should ensure another 20 years of success.