Marlborough Express - Weekend Express
Marlborough brewery moves to Christchurch
A brewery born in Blenheim 18 years ago is moving out of town after outgrowing the space it needs.
Renaissance Brewing made its first beer at the old Grove Mill — a 165-yearold brewery site on Blenheim’s Dodson St — in 2005. Brandhouse took over in 2018, after the brewery went into voluntary administration.
Renaissance has more than doubled its sales since then, and Brandhouse realised 12 to 18 months ago that it needed a bigger site, managing director Jason Dellaca said.
“There was obviously the need to get a better set up for our packaging in particular, so we needed to either get a second building or upgrade to a building in Blenheim, or shift to a building in Christchurch,” Dellaca said.
Alternative sites in Marlborough were looked at, but a decision was made to shift all operations to Christchurch, placing Renaissance under the same roof as other Brandhouse brands.
“We have a facility in Christchurch, so to move the packaging into that facility gave us consolidatory benefits,” he said.
Increasing freight and petrol costs were also factors, because most of the cans and bottles brewed in Blenheim were being shipped down to the distribution centre in Christchurch.
“When you took into account things like freight movements from Blenheim to Christchurch, efficiencies of consolidating our production units, etc, Christchurch just became a more logical movement,” Delleca said.
Other in-house brands such as readyto-drink range Social, have also been brewed and packaged at Dodson St since 2020. Renaissance and those brands
would now all be brewed at a site 200m down the road from Brandhouse’s packaging facility in Christchurch.
However, the “spiritual home” of Renaissance would always be Marlborough, and Delleca said its branding would continue to reflect where it was birthed.
“It’s always sad when you have to move a brand, but you do sometimes have to make decisions based on business
factors, and we very much still view renaissance as being a Marlborough brand,” he said. “It was born and bred in Marlborough, and it will always be close to our hearts … we plan to deliver exactly what we deliver now to all of our fans up in Marlborough.”
Renaissance head brewer Sean Moss was one of two permanent staff at old Grove Mill, and had decided to move to Christchurch with the brewery. “I’m
excited to move, excited for where we can push the brands from here,” Moss said.
Having worked for Renaissance since 2016, he said there had been a “lot of changes over the years … all for the better”.
“It will be sad to see the door close on this place, it’s where I cut my teeth, where I learned how to brew, but excited for the future,” Moss said.