Moa buyer ‘captain of a big ship for a small price tag’

Say what you like about Moa Brewery – and many people have over the years – but it always made fine beer, according to experts.

Blenheim-based Moa created a stir with its Mad Men-style prospectus in 2012 under chief executive Geoff Ross, setting the tone for its marketing which has been much criticised since.

Moa, which hasn’t made a profit since listing in 2012, was bought for just $1.9 million at the end of February by a company half-owned by managing director Stephen Smith.

Beer writer and judge Michael Donaldson said the brewery, founded by winemaker Josh Scott, had confused beer drinkers with its constant changes.

‘‘[Scott] was doing quite complicated and interesting stuff way before anyone else was doing it, so I could see why there was some value in that business – it was unique, it had that wine/beer crossover thing going on.’’

However, it moved from being an artisan beer maker to aspiring to become a big-volume supermarket brand, he said. The challenge was to keep the price low enough to attract the casual buyer, having burned off the craft beer ‘‘geeks’’ early on.

‘‘The thing was they made good beer . . . they’re pleasing, satisfying beers and I know plenty of people that like them. Their more esoteric stuff also was good.’’

Beer blogger Dylan Jauslin said that for a small price tag, Smith had become captain of a big ship.

Moa had tried to grow as fast as it could in order to get snapped up by a bigger brewer.

Jauslin, manager of Wellington’s Goldings Free Dive Bar, said: ‘‘When it came down to it, at the end of the day other breweries like Panhead turned out to be better at doing that and got bought out first.’’

In his blog, The Bottleneck, Jauslin also points to homophobic and sexist marketing as a problem.

‘‘A lot of breweries try and be positive about how they portray themselves, and Moa’s marketing always came across as quite negative and critical, and that’s not a good thing to associate with beer.’’ Moa’s beer was not the issue.

‘‘On a pure technical level there was nothing wrong with it, and I would have stocked it in my bar under different circumstances.’’

Smith, who spent 18 years at Lion before joining the company three years ago, said Moa’s biggest mistake had been to list on the stock exchange.

‘‘When you’re in the public domain like that and then you choose to behave like they did at the start, with the things that have been heavily publicised, you set yourself up to fail.’’

Moa only had itself to blame for not capitalising on its positive attributes such as an authentic brand and a beautiful location, Smith said.

‘‘I wasn’t involved in the company at the time. I look back at that and think to myself, Geoff [Ross] has a certain style of marketing which is to be disruptive but that stuff was inappropriate, ignorant, and arrogant.’’

However, he did not believe Moa had failed – plenty of people were still buying the beer.

Moa has just signed an exclusive deal with Foodstuffs, which will stock the beer in its New World, Pak ‘n Save, Four Square and Liquorland stores. It was also looking at producing its own take on seltzers, and non-alcoholic drinks as well.