Classic Kiwi beer brand works to save the planet
Enjoying an iconic Kiwi beer to help save the planet? Cheers to that.
New Zealand is a nation that isn’t afraid to roll up its sleeves and put in the hard yards to get things done. nd when it comes to iwi ingenuity, there’s no need to look further than one of our most beloved beer brands.
Thanks to some significant behind-the-scenes graft designed to lessen its impact on the planet, port has cemented its spot as
New Zealand’s most sustainable beer.
y swapping from plastic to paper labels, port estimates a whopping , kilograms of plastic will stop entering New Zealand’s landfill each year. The changes also mean up to , litres of ink will be saved annually, while moving the supply of paper for carton board bo es to a local supplier will mean thousands of kilometers in transport will be saved and result in significant carbon emission reduction.
Significant environmental benefits
The changes are significant, says eter Simons, managing director at reweries.
To the individual, these may seem like simple changes to the bottles and packs, but considering port is the third-largest beer brand in New Zealand and represents in every ten litres of beer sold, the environmental benefits of this move are significant,” he says.
ligned with the draft advice of the limate hange
ommission, reweries believes it needs to make meaningful change’ in its value chain to actively reduce its carbon footprint by taking real action and not ust buying carbon offsets,” says Simons.
s a company has set an ambitious goal to halve our carbon footprint by from a baseline and move to
per cent renewable energy sources for our breweries by
. This has started already in by switching from coal to renewable biomass at our brewery in Timaru and port’s commitment and changes are another important step towards this goal,” says Simons.
The latest sustainability measures are part of a raft of changes. rewtroleum, a initiative, saw the invention of biofuel made from leftover brewing yeast which cut carbon emissions by eight per cent.
Then in , the company made port eer ottle Sand from crushed bottles to provide
“As a company DB has set an ambitious goal to halve our carbon footprint by 2030 (from a 2018 baseline) and move to 100 per cent renewable energy sources for our breweries by 2030.”
an alternative to using beachderived sand. The sand is then supplied to construction companies, manufacturers and anyone else who needs it, reducing the country’s dependence on beach-derived sand.
A pioneering legacy
t’s a case of looking backwards to build the future - by drawing on port’s pioneering legacy.
The iconic iwi brew was created in by orton
outts, a New Zealand inventor who built a fully functioning
-ray machine when he was ust and went on to revolutionise the science of brewing beer.
rom a young age outts was always looking to make things better, believing that if you didn’t have what you needed, you should build it.
y age he built a two-way radio station, making him the first person to send a radio signal across the e uator.
t , and still too young to drink a beer himself, he took over the family’s brewery, which later became
reweries. is inventiveness was only ust getting started, fuelled by his mantra et nothing come between man and a great beer.”
s head brewer, outts’ brilliant and practical mind came up with continuous fermentation’ a groundbreaking method of brewing beer that allows raw materials to be added to one end, while beer is continuously drawn from the other. t was a revolutionary alternative to traditional bath brewing, and still uses the process to this day.
Keeping up with the times
hile port was originally developed for the hardy working men of days gone by day, it adapted over the decades to keep up with the times. So when the drinking public wanted something more refreshing and balanced, orton came up with port old. hen there were calls for a full-flavoured beer with less carbs, orton crafted port
. y the s the wine bar fad hit, and orton liberated beer drinkers with port ry. ater came port itrus, which mi ed port ager with lemon uice so beer-loving
iwis could en oy a lighter brew. outts passed away in
, aged , but his legacy of ingenuity and ground-breaking values lives on. Now, port knows it isn’t enough to ust make a better beer, they have to make a better world.
port is a proud iwi brand that is committed to making New Zealand an even better place to en oy a beer, and that means helping to tackle today’s refuse problems and those of the future,” says Simons.
ake sure to keep an eye out for the new port bottles and packs on shelves the ne t time you’re at your local supermarket or li uor store.