How do you ship a brewery kit into the UK when all the ports are full of containers from business’ that have gone bust? This is not a riddle! It is a genuine question. Please leave your answers at the door.
Unanswerable questions aside, the unfortunate truth of the matter is that the journey of our brewery is reflecting of the times and the shipping of our kit has been delayed for approximately four to eight weeks. This is due to the current unprecedented demand on the UK ports due to Brexit and COVID19.
There are 100,000s of containers being held in various ports around the country. Ships full of cargo who manage to make it into port are finding it difficult to dock and unload. This has led to an 810% increase in the price of shipping containers to these shores, making it an unviable option. Even if you do bite the bullet and get a spot on a ship willing to join the queues in our ports, there is no guarantee on the delivery date or that it will even make it off the ship.
To add to our mayhem, we are expecting five containers. The major items being our tanks which are sizeable, to say the least. They include (but are not limited to) a mash conversion vessel (MCV), Lauter Tun, Copper/whirl, and four dual-purpose vessels (DPVs), two of those are double-sized! Not something we can easily air freight out to get around the bottleneck at the port.
We are working closely with SSV Limited, as we have throughout this project and are grateful for their help and candidness about the current situation. It is a position we all wish we could avoid, but equally a position outside all our combined control.
After a year of working on the design concepts, functionality of the brewery and additional equipment it feels frustrating to have the brewhouse built and waiting for a ship. It’s like stumbling at the last hurdle with the finishing line in sight.
We know many companies around the country are all experiencing very frustrating and challenging times. Our story is not a unique one, but the least we can all do is share our experiences and hope to we can all learn from these testing times and build resilience into our small, independent businesses.
We all personally cannot wait to brew and share our beers with you, our team has now doubled from two to four and we’re raring to go. Currently, our impressive small team is working behind the scenes to get everything in place for us to be up and running as soon as the kit is in place.
This is the longest our head brewer, Vinny has ever gone without brewing since entering the industry and to say he’s feeling the itch is an understatement. We will get the kit in, and we will be brewing very soon.
We, like many of you, are waiting eagerly for the hospitality industry to re-open and to be able to share a drink with you and those who have helped us in realising our dream so far.
