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CUB closes Bluetongue Brand & Brewery

  • Gash
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10 years 1 month ago - 10 years 1 month ago #1173 by Gash
On 23rd January, at 9am Carlton & United Breweries (CUB) Management broke the news with brewery staff, that the Central Coast located brewery, one hour north of Sydney, was going to close down in 6 months time.

The brewery is well known as the home of Bluetongue, launched by a team of passionate beer lovers and businessman in 2001, with John Singleton buying a stake in 2005, then in 2007 was acquired by Pacific Beverages and then in December 2011 acquired by SAB Miller. The brewery today brews Bluetongue along with being the site for brewing under license of Peroni, Miller Chill and Miller Genuine Draft, all SAB Miller brands.

The reasoning for the close has been given to Beer & Brewer by Jeremy Griffith, CUB Corporate Affairs Director, as follows:

When you look at CUB's production facilities, all of which are on the east coast of Australia, they include Warnervale in NSW, Yatala in Qld, Abbotsford in Vic, Cascade in Tas and a Cidery in Campbelltown (NSW).
Yatala and Abbotsford each have capacity for 4-5 million hL per annum, whereas Warnervale only has 0.5 million hL per annum.
There is plenty of capacity in the existing breweries to facilitate supply without the Warnervale brewery.
What will happen to the brewery and staff? Mr Griffith explained the following:

The brewing equipment and technology at Warnervale is not being sold, as it includes innovative packaging equipment and technology needed up at Yatala to continue their capability of packaging Peroni, Miller Genuine Draft and Miller Chill.
When asked by Beer & Brewer what if CUB gave this notice prior Casella and CCA forming The Australian Beer Company, would have CUB entertained selling the brewery back to CCA, Mr Griffith said “no, the Warnervale brewery has really good capability” and the equipment will definitely be used up at Yatala as mentioned above.
The 64 staff have been given six months notice, and the aim is to deploy some staff to other CUB operations.
Beer & Brewer is sad to hear of the Bluetongue brand ending, after such an interesting short history and great support of its local community. We hope all staff wishing to stay in the industry can find another job as soon as possible.

www.cub.com.au
Last edit: 10 years 1 month ago by Gash.

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