In another woe for Britain’s biggest craft brewer, BrewDog has been forced to throw away millions of pounds worth of Punk IPA.
The infection at its Ellon brewery – first revealed by The Daily Record – has been downplayed by BrewDog, which says the total amount of beer wasted amounted to just 0.02% of its annual production volumes.
“Most of the affected beer did not leave the brewery,” said BrewDog, and the “small quantity” that did reach customers did not pose a health risk. The statement also branded the incident a “minor, irregular process issue”.
But on closer inspection, the blunder highlights ongoing problems under the bonnet of the beleaguered brewer.
‘Basic hygiene issues’
An email to staff from BrewDog’s chief supply chain officer Chris Fielden pointed to systemic issues.
“Throughout August and even now we’ve had millions of pounds of beer that has been impacted by basic hygiene issues that have resulted in infected beer,” Fielden said. “Not only have we had to throw beer away, we’ve also shipped sour beer to customers and have Punk running at the highest rate of customer complaints it’s ever seen.”
The brewer’s investigation led to the conclusion that “poor hygiene standards, particularly around the brewing operation” were to blame for the infection, Fielden said.
Beer infections are not uncommon from time-to-time, even at large scale commercial brewing operations. It’s more concerning, however, to hear Fielden claim BrewDog’s staff have been playing the blame game over the mishap.
“What’s most disappointing is that when I chat to people about this I’ve seen very little personal accountability, with people blaming other teams or other parts of the process,” Fielden said. “As such, I wanted to be really clear that shop floor hygiene is the responsibility of every single one of us.”
Culture problem?
This window into workplace comms at BrewDog is hardly encouraging. It’s now been more than three years since allegations of a “toxic workplace culture” were first made by BrewDog staff past and present, and the brewer claims to have made significant strides in this time to improve staff satisfaction and retention.
So why are staff seemingly so reluctant to admit to mistakes, if not for fear of repercussion?
Granted, changing attitudes and behaviours that have been baked into a company by those at the very top – as suggested by a significant number of staff at the time of the allegations – is rarely a quick fix.
But Fielden is clearly leaning towards the stick rather than the carrot as a motivator. The former Warp Snacks and Innocent supply chain lead was quick to point out failures of staff had “a direct impact on business EBITDA” and led BrewDog to miss its productivity target by £950,000 in August.
Overdue accounts
That direct reference to EBITDA is telling, given time has now just about run out on the deal BrewDog struck with private equity house TSG in 2017.
That deal guaranteed TSG an 18% compounding annual return on its £213m investment by August 2024, so the brewer needs to start turning a profit, and fast. In the year ended 31 December 2022 it sunk to a £25m loss, while last year’s accounts – due in June – are conspicuous in their absence at Companies House.
Equally absent – at least, in a public-facing sense – is the brewer’s CEO James Arrow. The former Boots Opticians MD replaced BrewDog founder James Watt at the helm of the Scottish business in May, but is yet to sit down with any national or trade media outlet. Requests to interview Arrow face-to-face by The Grocer have so far fallen on deaf ears.
So while the infected batches of Punk have long since gone down the drain, lingering doubts over BrewDog’s direction are proving harder to wash away.
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