City plans craft beer brewing bonanza
Plans for Upper Hutt to become a craft brewery destination for manufacturers and beer aficionados alike are coming together at pace.
Wellington’s Te Aro Brewing is moving to the city’s South Pacific Industrial Park, home of Panhead Custom Ales [now owned by the Lion Group] and neighbour to the Kereru Brewery.
A new industry player, Boneface Brewing, is also setting up and South Pacific Park owner Malcolm Gillies said he expects more to follow.
‘‘There are three other brewers we are working with right now about this,’’ he said.
Te Aro Brewing will lease 1000 sqm in the former Dunlop factory space near the Upper Hutt CBD from March 1.
‘‘Anyone who’s been to our brewery in Tory St will know we’re struggling for space.We will hope to be up and running by the end of the end of the month,’’ Te Aro’s Karl Hayes said.
‘‘There are big plans to market Upper Hutt as a craft brewingtourism destination.’’
‘‘Our landlord [Gillies} and the Upper Hutt City Council are very proactive in attracting new breweries.’’
Gillies said grouping the craft beer operators within a short walking distance of each other made it logical to develop a combined destination hub, expected to be marketed as Brewtown.co.nz.
‘‘It’s about setting up spaces to accommodate various tasting areas with a common green areas. We could have food trucks coming in. We are looking at everyone working on this as a team,’’ Gillies said.
‘‘This has long been the vision of the of the city council and I don’t want to steal their thunder. It’s their initiative and I’m happy to be providing the space.’’
Panhead’s Mike Neilson said having breweries in one location would be a boost to the industry.
‘‘It will create a real special precinct. It’d be a cool little place for beer enthusiasts and it would be keeping it in the [industry] family,’’ he said.
Panhead has expanded its South Pacific Park site and today has 30 employees working at its 2000sqm operation.
Upper Hutt city economic development manager Phil Gorman said the news on Te Aro, Boneface and other possible businesses was exciting.
In 2015 and last year Gorman operated a trade stand at the New Zealand Breweries Guild conference, touting Upper Hutt as a craft brewery location.
‘‘We were the only local authority promoting our city as a place to set up. Really a lot of this happening now developed from that work.,’’ he said.
‘‘We felt with Panhead and Kereru there was a foundation here already and a real opportunity for Upper Hutt to make something of it.’’
‘‘The message we put put was we are a council which is proactive about attracting businesses. We have good commercial rates, plenty of flat stable land and in Malcolm we have a landlord who makes things happen,’’ Gorman said.