Canned Innovation
Hambleton Brewery create new products with help from PAPI
Hambleton Brewery, based in Ripon, is an award-winning micro-brewery producing cask, keg, and bottled craft beers under its own brands and offering a contract brewing and packaging service to other independent breweries brand owners.
They produce a range of vegan friendly craft beers, pale ales (including a low alcohol pale ale), blonde beers and gluten free ales and lagers, available in bottle, cask or keg. These products are sold principally to pubs, bars and off licences in the North of England. They also brew and package for around 40 different breweries and brands across the UK.
One of their ales, Toast, was developed in an effort to combat food waste. It's made using surplus bread from bakeries, delis and sandwich manufacturers which received international media coverage and sales.
Innovation
The brewery specialise in small volume, high quality runs. However, in recent years they found that demand for canned beers had risen continually from existing and new customers. The increased popularity of canned beers presented a market opportunity for the brewery, and they planned to develop a range of new craft beers, targeted at the younger market segment. The company therefore needed to invest in a new canning line in order to bring a new contract canning service to market. Canning equipment is specialist and complex, and significant automation is required in order to can beers to a high level of quality.
Business growth
In order to purchase a canning machine, the company were awarded a £20,000 PAPI grant. The machine has five filling heads and is designed to fill and seam 2000 330ml standard aluminium cans per hour. Once seamed, the cans flow down a slide that can be connected to a collection table and label applicator.
Since installing the new machinery, the company have been able to launch their new canning service to new and existing customers, as well as launching their new canned product range.
The company predicts that the launch of this service will cause net profit to triple within 5 years. They have also created 2 new jobs within the business.
The PAPI grant has allowed us increase our capacity and exploit the growing demand for canned beers.