Wayward Brewery, Camperdown: $2 million owed to creditors as administrator appointed

A popular inner-city craft beer company has been forced to restructure, with $2 million of debts revealed. See what it means here.

A popular inner-city brewery – owing creditors up to $2 million – has been forced into voluntary administration with its owner blaming declining interest in the “craft beer” market for a series of financial losses.

Wayward Brewing Co and the Local Drinks Collective in Sydney’s inner west suburb of Camperdown were placed into voluntary administration as part of a “financial restructuring of the business” on January 2.

Founder of Wayward Brewing Co and former chair of the Independent Brewers Association Peter Philip said the craft brewery and tap room would operate under a “business as usual” model during the financial restructure by DBA Advisory director Richard Abraham.

Mr Philip blamed significant increases in production costs, interest rate rises and major conglomerates choking out smaller craft breweries for mounting financial losses at his inner-city craft brewery.

“The independent craft beer industries have been under pressure over the past few years, but we were expecting a really nice bump while coming out of Covid,” Mr Philip said.

“Smaller craft beer breweries are facing unfair competition with multinationals conglomerates.

Founder of Wayward Brewing Co and former chair of the Independent Brewers Association Peter Philip.

“About 85 per cent of the beers sold in Australia are owned by two large multinational brewers, with unlimited access to capital and they can reduce their prices to make their products more competitive in the market – smaller brewers do not have that capabilities.

Mr Philip argued that independent craft beer was a “premium product”, so rather than spending $25 on a six pack consumers are paying $18 with a major brand.

“It’s a double whammy”, the consumer is not only buying less of our products but all those profits are also being taken overseas by the two multinationals”, he said.

Wayward Brewery was placed into voluntary administration on January 2.

The brewery boss said the newly appointed administrator was “confident the financial restructuring will result in a stronger and more resilient business emerging from administration”.

“The past few years have been an extremely challenging time across our industry and for the wider economy,” Mr Philip said.

“All of our input cost have gone up by at least 25 per cent in the past two year, transport is up 50 per cent and electricity is up about 70 per cent.

“A third of the cost of can of beer purchased at the bottle shop is going into paying taxes.”

He called on consumers to support local business that produce premium beers over big beer companies.

Mr Philip revealed there was a combination of trade creditors, statutory creditors and shareholder loans to the business resulting in funds of around $2 million owed.