Gage Roads gets back on track
Gage Roads Brewing boss John Hoedemaker says its Palmyra facility is back to running efficiently three months after a processing fault forced it to dump more than 500,000 litres of beer.
The contract brewer's receipts slumped in the past quarter. It lost about 265,000 carton equivalents (2.1 million litres) in sales and about $2 million in gross profits because of the hold-up.
Unaudited revenue rose 21 per cent for the financial year to $27 million.
Production volume was up 20 per cent to 1.7 million carton equivalents.
The fault in April, which resulted in about four weeks of production forgone, occurred during the commissioning of new equipment. It is understood a yeast infection led testers to reject the beer.
Gage Roads said the annual sales result demonstrated the strong support of customers despite the production interruption. Twenty-five per cent shareholder Woolworths is the brewer's biggest client.
"With the last quarter's production issues behind us, the plant is again running at great efficiencies," Mr Hoedemaker said.
"The learnings during the past financial year, with the (new) warehousing strategy fundamentally de-risk our operations."
The company spent $1.6 million on plant and equipment, including a new yeast management system.
Gage Roads' cash holdings had dropped to $1 million by June 30, from $5.2 million a year before.
Its credit facility was last month increased by $4 million to $9.7 million.
The brewer is planning a summer rebrand of its own range of craft beers after sales fell 16 per cent in the past year.
