New Zealand’s oldest craft brewery, Sunshine Brewing in Gisborne, looking for new owners or — more intriguingly — seeking expressions of interest for a merger with an existing brand.
The move comes as the trio of existing owners, who have been at the helm for the past 12 years of Sunshine’s 36-year history, move into retirement.
Sunshine is best known for the iconic Gisborne Gold, which makes up the bulk of the brewery’s production.
Co-owner Martin Jakicevich said the brewery needed new energy.
“It’s just time for us to get out,” Jakicevich said. “We’re all moving on to retirement and it’s unfair for the young crew in there for us to stay around.
“We can’t take the business any further unless we really commit, and we all, at this stage, want to wind down our businesses and slow down.”
The other two owners are Mark Young and Peter Thorpe.
In calling for expressions of interest, Jakicevich said the owners were open to a sale or a merger with a “like-minded brewery”.
“We would expect the merger partner would bring in the management, assume head brewer responsibility and control the combined business,” Jakicevich said.
“We are profitable, although this financial year has been difficult, especially in the hospitality market in Gisborne but national trade business is showing good growth.
“We see a merger as a route to amortising our respective sales team costs, administration costs and head brewer costs over a bigger base whilst delivering a greater sales reach, more supplier volume-related discounts, and savings from utilising brewing synergies.
Marion Prevot is currently handling the lead brewer role at the moment, with advice from brewing consultant Sam Williamson.
“Sam comes down for a few days once a month and helps with recipes and is just sorting out the brew processes a bit more. We’re just really impressed with him as a person and the way he does things.”
Jakicevich said a merger rather than a sale was a way for a combined brewery to hit the volumes needed to make the numbers work.
“My feeling about the industry is that many breweries struggle to get enough volume through to reduce the costs of running a business.
“The merger idea allows someone to get that critical size around 700,000 to 800,000 litres. You can get a lot of savings out of that [volume].”
A merger with an a brewery in Wellington or Auckland could mean moving the production of Gisborne Gold to make savings on freight.
He also noted that the Sunshine kit was “very good at turning out 5000 litre batches of 440ml cans and getting them through a canning line”.
“So there might be a brewery that is doing some contract work and this is a way to get rid of the contract work and bring that margin back in-house.”
The brewery churns out around 375,000 litres per year, but over half that total (around 200,000 litres) is Gisborne Gold.
The brewery itself is relatively new, installed in 2018, and is a 20-barrel, three-vessel ABE steam-driven semi-automatic brewhouse.
There’s 25,000L of fermentation space, a natural gas boiler, Alfa Laval EPC65 centrifuge, four-head ABE Cancraft15 canning machine capable of handling 3000L of 330ml cans in an 8-hour day.
A Gai MLE 661 6 head bottling machine is used for Gisborne Gold bottles sold in the local market.
A taproom (pizza and beer) is part of the business.
Any expression of interest should be sent to martin@sunshinebrewery.co.nz