Almost a month has gone by since this year’s BeerX brewery event in Liverpool, the biggest trade event in the UK right now for beer and brewing businesses.
As a business finance provider with a specialist team dedicated to the brewing industry, it’s certainly a key date in our diary. As regulars here at BeerX it was so good to see the enormous growth of the event this year and catch up with so many friends and colleagues within brewing. SIBA announced that this year’s BeerX was the biggest the trade association has ever organised, with a 40% increase on last year’s trade attendees! Thank you to everyone that came to chat to us.
Expanding into Hospitality
One of the key takeaways for us from BeerX was SIBA’s new research highlighting the opportunities for brewers within hospitality markets.
The Brewery Untapped – SIBA’s Insight Research Project – really showed the potential growth coming for British Beer. The report is full of everything positive an independent brewer wants to see for their industry, with a particular focus on offering solutions to the hospitality industry – previously less associated with British beer.
The pub trade is ordinarily the go-to market for brewers, and for good reason. That said, the research now clearly shows that consumers would visit all sorts of hospitality venues more often if there was a better range of brewed British Beer, including restaurants, coffee shops and night clubs. This opens the door to a massive market for our British brewers and means businesses might now need to operate on a much larger scale than they’d once planned for, if they hope to keep up.
Managing the costs of expansion
With this sort of rapid expansion of course comes an increase in costs and energy usage as brewers manage the many stages of brewing. In a world where costs seem to be going up all around us, it can be a real worry for small and independent brewers across the country for how they will achieve this level of expansion. Thankfully, there are ways they can look to reduce energy costs, to mention a few:
- Heat Recovery – Check if you have a heat capture system installed. Investing in a boiler that can recover escaping heat and reuse it will create significant savings.
- Insulate Hot Lines – Check the temperature of all your lines and whether they are insulated. This saves a huge amount of otherwise wasted energy.
- Pump System – Check you have the right pump for the job. Look at the specs, pressure, and pump curve. If the scale of the brewery has changed since it was installed, it may not be the right or most cost-effective solution anymore.
- Refrigeration – Implementing clever control schemes to manage processes more effectively can reduce energy costs, like separately controlling fans and compressors.
- Carbon Capture – Ideally, you want to capture all the CO₂ that is naturally produced through processes like fermentation and bottling and transfer it to a process area where it can be repurposed.
- Renewable Energy – Solar and wind power installations can easily help to reduce electricity consumption in stages like the canning line.
We recognise that many of these energy-saving solutions do require an initial capital investment to achieve the savings on a longer-term basis. And that’s where Moorgate Finance come in.
Tailored Brewery Finance
Whether you’re a start-up, microbrewery, or someone bigger, Moorgate Brewery Finance is here to help you make it all happen. We have been working with breweries since 2015 and have seen first-hand how each of them have had to diversify to keep up with this ever-growing market.
Our aim is to work with breweries on a one-to-one basis to really understand their needs and present them with options that are tailored to their business and growth plans.
We are passionate about keeping brewers at the top of their game and have a dedicated, in-house team that focus on financing breweries every day. We are here to help with all areas of your business finance, including:
- Asset Finance – access to a panel of over 70 lenders ready to finance any of the brewing equipment you may need.
- Business Loans – offering your brewery a cash flow injection to enable business growth.
- Invoice Finance – turn the pause button off and unlock cash tied up in outstanding invoices.
- Tax Funding – specialist funding for tax bills designed to help you accurately forecast.
Whether you’re looking to expand your brewery into the growing hospitality market for British brewers, or develop your business in another way entirely, we’d love the opportunity to speak to you about how we can help to make these plans a reality.
What our Customers Say
“We have used Moorgate twice for asset finance in our brewery. They have good connections in the industry, are great to deal with and always very competitive with high quality finance company relationships. Recommended.” – Chris
Hop to it and call us on 01908 92 62 62 to get started.
