The brewing sector is changing, from the amount of duty breweries pay on packaged beer, to the warm, oversaturated shelves the cans end up on. For us it’s a no brainer, direct to consumer, direct from tank is not only more environmentally friendly, it also requires less backbreaking work, and keeps the margins where they need to be for us to remain profitable and keep our prices fair.
We love having our beers in cans, making our fridge look pretty and being able to share our products with consumers around the UK. But it carries a heavy burden. There are way more cons than pro’s so for now at least, our beer will be served direct from tank or keg through our taproom.
The logistical nightmare of getting a pallet of 3500+ cans through the door at Xylo is a massive pain. The doors are too narrow for the pallet to fit through, and the front stores are too low so the only way of getting them into the building is to de-palletise into bin bags and cram them into every tiny corner. Doing this in the driving wind and rain during a Margate winter makes the task even more stressful and potentially catastrophic!
Even if we did find a solution, the cost of designing and printing labels, the hours spent filling and boxing, the inevitable losses due to leaks, dents and damages, the reduction in shelf life and the need to separate the batch into multiple vessels prior to canning makes it unviable.
Once packaged, the ever decreasing margins, partly due to HRMC increasing the duty for packaged beer (bottles, cans, mini kegs) as opposed to non packaged (draught), also puts a squeeze on, resellers then want their cut, and on top of all that, we have no control over where they might end up, and at what price, and we hate to think how they might taste after sitting on a warm shelf or warehouse for months before they reach the consumer!
So, until something drastic changes, we will stick to tank beers!