A Tasmanian brewery has filled thousands of water cans to donate to disaster-affected communities

Hobart’s largest beer producer switched off its beer production on Tuesday to fill thousands of water cans to donate to disaster-affected communities. See the video.

A TASMANIAN beer maker switched off its beer production on Tuesday to fill thousands of water cans to donate to disaster-affected communities.

Cascade Brewery produced about 120,000 cans of free drinking water from its South Hobart production site with the drinks going to communities around the country where drinking water supply has been affected by natural disasters.

The immediate priority is bushfire-affected areas on the mainland and in Tasmania, where required.

Cascade Brewery’s Anita Holdsworth and Zander Evershed-Brown in the canning section of the factory that is producing water cans to donate to communities around Australia affected by natural disasters, including bushfires. Picture: LUKE BOWDEN

At least 100,000 cans, filled with water sourced from kunanyi/ Mt Wellington, were due to be shipped interstate on Tuesday night to be stored at parent company CUB’s facilities.

The initiative is part of CUB’s Disaster Relief Program which launched in 2018.

Cascade Brewery plant manager Anita Holdsworth said the 50,000 litres of water packaged wasn’t Cascade’s first water production day and she said it likely wouldn’t be its last.

“Recently we were able to donate 80,000 cans to southern New South Wales communities affected by the bushfire crisis,” she said.

“It’s absolutely something we’ll look to do in the future. At the moment we’re working with community and government partners to make sure there is water for communities in need.”

She said filling water cans wasn’t all that different to beer production.

“It really is quite simple. We turn off the beer-supply lines, fill up one of our beer tanks with water and the only main difference with beer and water production is there is no use of carbon dioxide, so there is a little less pressure in the cans,” she said.

The Cascade Brewery producing cans of water instead of beer for bushfire relief. Picture: LUKE BOWDEN

Hobart Lord Mayor Anna Reynolds said she was pleased to see a number of Hobart companies rolling up their sleeves to help with this summer’s bushfire relief.

“I think it’s great what Cascade is doing,” she said.

“It’s a company that is very much identified with Hobart so people will see through Cascade’s donations that Tasmania is really caring and thinking about victims.

“It’s a really positive thing to see so many Tasmanian businesses showing their support at this time because it generates a sense of community and a strong showing of compassion.”