THE former award-winning Sail and Anchor brewing team is embarking on a new brewery venture and is currently in the process of raising $2.8 million to turn those dreams into reality.
Peter Nolin and Bill Hoedemaker were the brewing team at Carlton United Breweries’ Sail and Anchor pub for five years and, along with Bill Hoedemaker’s brother John, have decided to create their own premium brewery – Gage Roads Brewing Company.
Mr Nolin said the beer market was ripe for a new premium brewing company.
“What we are going to create is a regional-sized microbrewery,” he said.
“We will be producing premium world-class beer.”
Mr Nolin said the aim was to build a brewing business similar in size to the Little Creatures operation.
He said there was plenty of room for more premium beer producers.
“The brewing market internationally, especially in the US, is huge,” Mr Nolin said.
“The market has been growing for 15 years now. In a mature market it is growing at 10 per cent a year.
“We reckon that it has finally caught on here and consumers are looking for this produce on the shelf. What we’ve got is the right people and the right market producing the right product at the right time.”
Mr Nolin said he and Bill Hoedemaker had always wanted to create their own brewery and, when John Hoedemaker sold his manufacturing business, the time was right to go it alone.
“We always wanted to make the brewery bigger and go further but it was limited in scope,” Mr Nolin said.
“John was a director of a manufacturing firm [Architectural and Structural Adhesives WA] and he recently sold that to a national firm.
“He has got good business management and financial management skills so we have a good mix.”
Mr Nolin said he and his business partners had scouted the globe and found suitable equipment to acquire. All that is needed now is cash to fund the project.
“We are undertaking the capital raising privately,” he said.
“We are looking at raising $2.8 million to cover the plant and equipment and working capital.
“We’ve raised about a third of that from private investors. We intend to open the offer in July and it will close at the end of that month.
“If we get the funds we will be producing beer in May 2004.”
The trio intend to produce a premium brewing facility to sell beer wholesale as opposed to the boutique brewing operations that have emerged in recent times.
“We are setting up a microbrewery, not a pub brewery, to produce premium beer to the world,” Mr Nolin said.
He said Western Australia was a good place to launch the business.
“We would really like to set it up here,” Mr Nolin said.
“The WA market is quite sophisticated.
“People are so isolated here and people do a lot of travelling and they bring back those experiences with them and they have tried a good range of beers.”
Mr Nolin said he and his business partners were yet to decide on property space to locate the brewing operations.
“We are looking at a few different places at the moment. We are looking at an industrial site in Cockburn, and sites around Fremantle but we are just looking at the moment,” he said.
“If we find the right site we could put retail on as well.”
Bill Hoedemaker and Mr Nolin have won 32 International Beer Awards.
