Queensland craft brewers have mixed response to industry overhaul

Queensland craft brewers are definitely seeing the glass only “half full” after a proposed legislative overhaul of the fledgling industry was announced this week.

Dial Before You Dig has licensed its trademarked testing and certification process to a firm in Canada.

HALF FULL

You might say it’s like half a loaf, or in this case, half a schooner.

A proposed legislative overhaul announced this week to even the playing field for Queensland’s craft beer makers has been met with a mixed response from key industry stakeholders.

They say it’s better than nothing but far from ideal.

Under the changes, independent brewers for the first time will be able to sell their beers at promotional events such as farmers’ markets. They will also be covered by a new liquor license, theoretically trimming a bit of the regulatory burden.

But Dave Kitchen, founder of Brisbane-based Ballistic Beer and head of the Independent Brewers Association of Australia, said vested interests in the liquor industry had thwarted his hopes for better market access. There’s also still too much red tape.

Ballistic Brewery owner Dave Kitchen

“We got a couple of small wins out of it but we’re not as far ahead as we should have been,’’ he told City Beat.

For instance, Kitchen said he will still be prevented from selling a bottle of artisan spirits to a customer who had been drinking it at his venue even though the same drop would not be available at the bottle shop down the street.

In addition, craft brewers were hoping to enjoy the ease of permitting for special events that has long been enjoyed by wine producers. Instead, they have to deal with a laborious process that most won’t bother to take on.

Kitchen noted that a very acceptable draft of the legislation was ready in August last year but it was then watered down after input from rival groups in the hospitality game.

Now, the legislation has been introduced in Parliament on one of the last sitting days before the election next month. That means a resolution is at least six months away, given the requirement for public comment.

Two years after the government hailed the launch of its “craft beer strategy,’’ Kitchen and his colleagues are feeling the glass is at best half full.

WORLD STANDARD

It’s quite an achievement.

A Brisbane company is well on the way to establishing an international standard to certify the people who make sure it’s safe to dig up streets, backyards and other construction sites.

A subsidiary of the well-known Dial Before You Dig outfit has just this month licensed its trademarked testing and certification process to a firm in Canada.

That follows rapid growth across Australia and New Zealand over the past five years, with plans to push into the UK next year and eventually establish a beachhead in the US and Singapore.

After two years of set-up work with utility companies and industry associations, DBYD Certification launched in 2015.

Dial Before You Dig has licensed its trademarked testing and certification process to a firm in Canada.

It quickly established itself as the industry benchmark, company boss Robert Row (illustrated) told us on Thursday.

He said that within a few months both Telstra and Optus required anyone doing excavation work impacting their networks to have the certification.

Previously, there had been no formal training program in place. Dial Before You Dig merely acts as a gateway, contacting relevant utilities ahead of planned excavation at a particular site.

“What we realised was that these guys were out there with no real capacity to demonstrate their competency,’’ Row said.

For $1195, his firm provides clients with written and practical testing, much like the hurdles you to clear to get a drivers license. Clients have to source their training elsewhere.

So far about 800 people across Australia have been given the tick for the work, which typically involves using ground-penetrating radar to identify underground lines and pipes for communications, power, gas, water, sewerage and the like.

That was enough for a few folks across the ditch to sit up and take notice in 2018. A licensing arrangement was nutted out for New Zealand and the first locators got certified last December.

“We can fairly say that there’s nothing else like it in the world,’’ Row said.