Hop Forward podcast wins a SIBA Business Award

Popular brewing industry podcast, Hop Forward: Getting Ahead In The Brewing and Beer Business, picked up the UK Best Craft Beer Promotion award at this year’s SIBA Business Awards, marking a significant milestone for the show as it turns five this November.

“I’m absolutely thrilled,” said host and founder, Nick Law. “Since launching in November 2018, the Hop Forward Podcast has been widely listened to by beer professionals and drinkers alike in the United Kingdom, Europe, USA and across the world.

“The podcast has afforded us the opportunity to visit a wide variety of breweries and craft beer businesses, as well as meet a diverse range of individuals ranging from entrepreneurs, leading brewers and individuals and groups seeking to make the beer scene a more wholesome, diverse and inclusive space.”

The SIBA judging panel commented: “The judges were hugely impressed by the breadth of information and knowledge being shared on this podcast and thought the execution was professional, engaging and entertaining. Particularly liked how brewery businesses themselves would benefit from listening –with some great insight on offer.”

This also comes at the same time that Hop Forward has launched a new website. Not only can listeners search the entire back

Vigo adds CIMEC rotary canning lines to range

Vigo, part of the Rawlings Group, has announced the addition of CIMEC counter pressure rotary canning lines to their canning line range to offer high speed canning under counter pressure fill conditions.

Commercial Director, Andy Pegman, comments: “Having supplied and supported CIMEC bottling lines for 19 years, the inclusion of CIMEC's counter pressure filling rotary canning lines is a natural transition. Our Engineering Team (9 engineers in all) have extensive experience of working with CIMEC machines. We're really pleased now to be able to offer customers wanting to increase their canning output the benefits of CIMEC's high build quality coupled with UK support from our renowned engineers. CIMEC machines are robust and reliable - the oldest CIMEC filler we service is 22 years, which really speaks for itself.”

CIMEC counter pressure rotary canning lines have throughputs up to 6,000 cans per hour and can be supplied with an optional can rinse unit and ink jet printing.

As with all filling lines supplied by Vigo, ABE lines and CIMEC lines, they are installed commissioned and backed up by Vigo Engineers. Service contracts are also available.

For more information go to www.vigoltd.com catalogue of shows but the site showcases the branding, marketing and consultancy work Nick Law and Sean Robertson do for a variety of clients, including businesses such as Lincoln Green Brewing Company, Broadtown Brewery, award-winning bottle shop Brewery Market and Nigeria’s first craft brewery, Bature Brewery.

“As a company that often works on other brands, sometimes it’s hard to pay as much attention to your own. We didn’t feel that the previous website accurately showcased what we offer to breweries and businesses to help improve their branding, messaging, marketing or commercial strategies; now you can see and judge for yourself,” added Nick Law.

Find out more at www.hopforward.beer

Tech Talk

Max Andrew, co-founder of Breww, offers some advice on launching your first webshop…

“The most recent SIBA report demonstrated how the pandemic changed consumer buying habits. 33% of brewers have introduced e-commerce in the last 2 years, but still 21% of breweries are not using e-commerce to sell their products directly to consumers.

Broadening your sales channels to include an ecommerce platform will hugely benefit your business; expand your reach, maximise sales growth, increase profitability and utilise the full capacity of your brewery.

Speaking to breweries at BeerX, a number sighted a lack of time and expertise in the reason why they haven’t launched their e-commerce channel. Choosing the right platform can seem daunting, but all make it quick and easy to set up and start selling with very little experience.

We found the most commonly used B2C e-commerce platforms by breweries are Shopify, WooCommerce, Shop Wired and BigCommerce. All have slightly different pricing models, some operating on a fixed month fee, and others taking a transaction fee.

It is not essential to hire a web designer to build your first webshop. All the platforms offer templates and guide you through the process to set up products and prices. It's worth investing in a good quality photographer to aid online conversion.

One crucial consideration is to ensure the ecommerce platform integrates with other software you already use. It's vital to have a single source of your sales stock, saving unnecessary admin tasks and ensuring you don’t sell a product online that you cannot ship. With so much choice online, disappointing customers is not a route to repeat business.”

Find out more at www.breww.com