Coopers Brewery celebrates successful 2017
Another exciting year for Australia’s family-owned Coopers Brewery from Adelaide. As said Managing Director Dr Tim Cooper, “in the 2017 financial year, we enjoyed further growth in our beer volumes of 2.9 percent. Our Coopers brands have continued to show some improvement, but we have also enjoyed good growth in our partner brands of Carlsberg, Sapporo, Brooklyn, Olympic and Thatchers.”
This past year, Coopers brewed about 830,000 hl beer, which is all the more pleasing as this marks the 24th consecutive year of growth in beer volumes against a backdrop of a shrinking beer market. Australian beer consumption has declined nearly ten percent over the past eight years, Dr Cooper pointed out.
Coopers opened its malting plant in November 2017 in the presence of the Governor of South Australia, His Excellency the Honourable Hieu van Le AC. The plant represents an investment of more than AUD 65 million (USD 51 million) and took four years of planning. Equipment was provided by the world’s leading malting and milling technology company, Bühler, headquartered in Switzerland. With a capacity of 54,000 tonnes of malt per annum, Coopers is now self-sufficient for its malt supply. This year it will commence supplying other brewers in Australia and Asia. This brings Coopers’ investment at its Regency Park site since 1998 to almost AUD 250 million (USD 200 million).
Dr Cooper added that the brewery continues to grow in terms of the diversity of its product range and the number of employees involved in supporting its operations and sales. More than 230 people are now employed at the brewery and maltings in Regency Park, at the Australian and New Zealand sales and marketing division of Premium Beverages, the home-brew businesses of Morgan’s in Queensland and of Mr Beer in Tucson, Arizona.
In 2016, Coopers released in Australia an automated homebrewing system called “BrewArt”, representing the fruition of nine years’ research and development. BrewArt comprises the “BeerDroid”, an automated fermenter that allows users to monitor and control their brew remotely with the BrewArt app, and the “BrewFlo”, a temperature controlled beer dispenser. BrewArt is already available in the US at selected outlets, along with the pre-packaged ingredients known as ‘BrewPrints’.
