Couple behind Sobah Beverages plan to open their booze-free beer plant at Burleigh Heads next year

A Gold Coast couple are in the midst of raising $1m to build Australia’s first alcohol-free brewery.

Clinton and Lozen Schultz, co-founders of Sobah Beverages on the Gold Coast.

It started as a home-brew experiment to accompany the bush tucker getting served up from their food truck four years ago.

Gold Coast couple Clinton and Lozen Schultz soon realised there was untapped potential in the non-alcoholic beers made with native ingredients that helped wash down the likes of emu, kangaroo and crocodile skewers.

They had created some of Australia’s first alcohol-free craft beers and are now on the cusp of building the nation’s first commercial brewery at Burleigh Heads dedicated solely to making the increasingly popular drinks.

Clinton Schultz and his wife, Lozen Schultz, co-founders of Sobah Beverages on the Gold Coast

Their company, Sobah Beverages, is currently in the midst of a $1m capital raising through equity crowd-funding site Birchal.

The money will fund the fit-out of the brewery complex, which is due for completion next May and is set to include a tap house and café.

More than 770 investors have already flagged interest in the business, with the funding round kicking off this week and closing early next month.

The business, which sold more than 20,000 cartons in the last financial year, now aims to triple production over the next 12 months.

Nationwide distribution deals with Coles and Dan Murphy’s make that an attainable goal, with the Sobah line stocked by in excess of 700 vendors across the country.

Exports to New Zealand are already under way and shipments have just started going to Hong Kong, with Singapore on the radar too.

The new brewery can’t start churning out the cans soon enough.

Sobah’s range of brews, including the likes of Lemon Aspen Pilsener, Pepperberry IPA and Aniseed Myrtle Stout, are currently made by two contract brewers in NSW.

As you might expect, it’s a less-than-ideal arrangement made immensely more difficult because of border closures.

The alcohol-free drinks sector is getting crowded so a point of difference is key.

The First Nations/indigenous focus of the business is not just a marketing gimmick since Clinton is a Gamilaraay man.

His prior work as a chef across both Queensland and the UK, along with his knowledge of native foods, has proved invaluable in developing the brews.

More recently, Clinton, a practising psychologist, just wrapped up work as an assistant professor in Aboriginal health at Bond University to devote himself full-time to the Sobah venture.

No doubt sparking investor appetite for the enterprise is a surge in demand for non-alcoholic beverages, with the sector growing nearly 3 per cent last year.

Forecasters have tipped 16 per cent growth through 2024, a rate which would outperform alcohol sales.

BREATHING EASIER

You wouldn’t know it looking at the gaggle of cranes that loom over the biggest construction site in Queensland right now.

But quietly deployed at Queen’s Wharf in Brisbane is a groundbreaking new system designed to dramatically improve the health of the workers.

Known as neXtrack, it aims to put a dent in a virtual epidemic of lung diseases across the industry, especially silicosis.

Building giant Multiplex has started using the compliance monitoring platform at the $3.6bn development, as well as work underway at the Star Casino.

Rival Hutchinson Builders is also deploying the system on several of their jobs.

Paul Brennan, co-founder of workplace safety firm Trieste Global

The concept is pretty simple.

Workers check-in at a site using a QR code that registers them to equipment, checks licenses and prompts safety messages and required control measures.

Managers can observe real-time data on site activity and improve safety measures if needed.

A complementary extraction system for removing fumes, exhaust and dust can also be integrated into the scheme, which costs as little as $10 per worker each month.

The brains behind the concept is construction industry veteran Paul Brennan (pictured), the boss and co-founder of Gold Coast-based start-up Trieste Global. He’s planning a national rollout of neXtrack.

“Construction sites by design have lots of workers, constantly moving work areas and potential safety threats,” he said.

“For too long the monitoring of safety has been done largely on an ad hoc basis with a lot of manual, paper-based systems.

“Project owners, builders and their subbies now have the ability to automate the process of hazard monitoring and implementing controls. We believe it won’t just save time and money, it will save lives.’’

The business, which launched three years ago, has already attracted quite a bit of interest from investors.

The company revealed recently that it had “secured a multimillion-dollar investment from a global software business’’ but then declined to divulge any details about the deal.

A search of company records, however, shows that job management software giant Simpro has taken a substantial stake in the business, which has nearly $2.5m worth of paid shares on issue.

An early-stage venture capital fund backed by a group of Brisbane philanthropists, known as the Impaqt Fund, has also tipped in $300,000.

These punters clearly see the money-making potential in battling the likes of silicosis, an incurable and often fatal lung disease caused by breathing in crystalline silica released into the air from the cutting, grinding or polishing of various materials.

The problem has re-emerged over the past 20 years in line with the popularity of manufactured stone often used in benchtops.