Yesterday, the Independent Brewers Association cancelled both of its major 2025 calendar events - The Indies Independent Beer Awards and BrewCon conference - due to challenging economic conditions and difficulties securing sponsorship.
Since then, Drinks Trade caught up with Kylie Lethbridge, CEO, to learn more about the decision and about what the Independent Brewers Association will be focusing on instead.
Drinks Trade: Kylie, yesterday must’ve been a tough day for the IBA… Was the reaction what you were anticipating?
Kylie Lethbridge: Yesterday was really tough for us, Sabrina, Emily and I; and the board. It's us that hears the stories each and every day and this year has been really hard, and so we were dreading that announcement going out yesterday, mainly because of what we thought we were going to get, who was going to say what, and all the things that you think of when you have to give bad news… But the calls and the texts and the emails that I've had, they've made my year. Some of our members are just so supportive.
DT: What factors led to you cutting both The Indies Awards and Brewcon for 2025?
KL: It's no secret that the industry has been challenged over the last 12 months, and so it's really no surprise to our members because many have been struggling to pay the bills. We're an organisation that relies solely on membership as well as sponsorship of these activities, but when the supply chain and our partners are also impacted by a drop in sales and drop in production, it means there's just no disposable income available.
We all go to the same people for advertising and sponsorship and there's only so many of them; and people have been creating new events because that's what they want to do, not taking into consideration that the people that are funding these things have had a tough year as well.
My recommendations to the board were very much along the lines of I think we need to take a leadership role in this space, and that is based on conversations with those supply chain partners because there's just not the money out there… We feel, in this instance, like we've done the right thing in ensuring they've got one less thing to have to find money for so they're not appearing like they're the bad guys.
DT: What will the IBA focus on instead in 2025?
KL: One of the things that we don't scream too loudly about but that we're quite proud of is the fact that, this year, we launched the Western Australian Craft Beer Strategy. We're [also] waiting on a date for a launch of Beer Tasmania, which is a dedicated plan for Tassie, [and] we're just finalising South Australia with our members, and that hopefully should be done and dusted in the early new year. Our objective (my objective certainly) has always been the Federal Government considerations. Policy and resourcing is a very long game, and so while we were doing that I set out to ensure there were state strategies in place… supporting their breweries to grow and prosper as manufacturers as well as visitor experiences, and so we'll continue to do that.
Next year, we’ll be really focused on the implementation of those strategies as well as taking advantage of all the opportunities we can in the lead up to a federal election, [including] working very, very hard on our budget submission, which is due on the 31st of January.
We'll [also] be focused on developing more member resources that help as many members as we can do business smarter and more effectively and ensure quality is still top of the game. When you reduce staff, sometimes, your quality expert is one of the first to go… So we've done a lot of work on providing resources in that space. We'll be working on how to count your excise and lots of things that hopefully will just help members each and every day.
DT: Yesterday, you mentioned in your statement to media that the IBA will be working with stakeholders 'to reinvent' The Indies... Can you explain what the next Indies Awards might look like?
KL: When I started [at the IBA] I'd come from having a passion for beer but not from working in the industry. I sort of came with different eyes, and I came in and went hang on, there's state awards here, there's national awards here, we all work from the same style guidelines, we all do something very similar. I was trying to delineate between who does what and understand the benefit that was going back to the entrant and came to the conclusion very early on that we needed to improve the feedback process that we gave our entrants, because much of the reason that they entered was to test a new beer/test a new style/be marked by their peers.
The other thing that I kind of dipped my toe in the water at that point in time was tentatively suggesting that the awareness from a consumer perspective. You know, purchasing a bottle of wine because it has five medals stuck on the top of it drives purchasing behaviour whereas that wasn't happening with beer. Consumers didn't look for the medal/didn't look for we are this trophy winner, and so there was a disconnect between the celebration night - coming away having a trophy, celebrating having some beers - and then there being no longer term benefit from you spending your really hard-earned money to enter an awards.
What we've wanted to try and achieve in the last couple of years - again without the resources to have had a huge amount of time to do it - is going ok, how do we pull this apart so we're not just doing the same thing as the AIBAs and the Sydney show or the Perth show or the Queensland show? How do we respond to member feedback and entrant feedback that is yes, please tell the consumer more about why I won that medal or that trophy? And so we're going to - in the next 12 months with our advisory committee who are super experienced and passionate bunch of people - try and reinvent the awards, pull it apart so we're more consumer facing, so we involve the consumer more in the actual awards process, the event at the end, [and] possibly even the ceremony. We've got a bunch of creative people working on it, so the ideas are flowing already, which is fantastic.
DT: Lastly, how tough is it out there for Australia’s independent brewers at the moment and for the foreseeable future? Will we see a reduction in the number of breweries placed into voluntary administration and liquidation in 2025?
KL: I don't have a crystal ball, but I do have good insight. We've got our economic data back that we're looking at [and] I talk to our members each and every day. I suspect that it's not the end of the VAs… All the chief economists are saying there's not going to be anything eased in the next 12 months.
[But also], I think there's a wait-and-see on that question because we need to get to the end of summer (where the warmer weather does mean people drink more beer) and we need to see what happens after the next excise hike, which is February. There are definitely success stories and there are stories of growth and expansion, and we celebrate those as much as we can, but they're not the norm.
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