More in the glass than just beer

Taking an innovative approach to the brewing process is paying dividends for the Sawmill Brewery at Matakana.

The business re-certified as a B Corp business last month, the only brewery in New Zealand to achieve the certification and one of 6000 businesses globally.

B Corp Certification is a designation that a business is meeting high standards of verified performance, accountability and transparency on everything from charitable giving to supply chain practices and input materials.

Sawmill boss Mike Sutherland says B Corp means they are on a measurable path of improvement.

“It is challenging to get certified and you do have to be operating at the very top of your industry, but the critical part for us and for consumers is the continuous improvement and the measuring of this,” Sutherland says.

“As a manufacturer, we use a lot of resources, especially water and power, so we have to constantly be doing better.

“There are things we do really well – our waste to landfill is averaging less than 11kgs per week, which would be one of the lowest rates in the world for a brewery, and we are really efficient in our use of water.

“We also source almost all our grain, hops and yeast from New Zealand businesses. This makes our beer offering quite different to other breweries, but we know a lot of New Zealanders care about these things and it’s important to us to spend our money here.”

The 2022 Kantar Better Futures report showed that commitment to sustainable behaviours in New Zealand continues to grow, with 43% of Kiwis saying they are committed to living a more sustainable life, the third year in a row this has continued on an upward trend.

“In other areas we want to do better – packaging, for example. A lot of our beer is sold in kegs which are reusable, and we offer flagon fills at the brewery, but it would be great to see a scheme introduced to reuse glass bottles, rather than use new ones every time – other countries do it well and the ABC crate system already exists.”

Sawmill has recently installed a carbon recapture system in the brewery.

“Our expectation is that we will no longer have to purchase CO2, whereas last year we bought nearly 40 tonnes.”

The system works by capturing the CO2 otherwise lost to the atmosphere during fermentation and reusing it in the brewery for packaging and carbonation.

The Sawmill has also been the pilot brewery for EECA – a government agency who support energy efficiency and the use of renewable energy in New Zealand – for a project to investigate decarbonising in the brewing industry.

“We want to lead change in our industry and push boundaries. The beer has to always be great, and we want the business to aim for the same high standards,” Sutherland says.