‘In the future there will be a need to be creative and more efficient with resources available…’

Rob Jacobson is Master Brewer at Wadworth, Devizes and is looking into the future and how they might adapt to climate change. Rob identifies the role that the brewery’s suppliers will similarly need to play– in having appropriate “footprints,” for example.

We are in the process of looking at feasibility and scoping of a new brewing facility which is a great place to be, that’s quite exciting. So as far as equipment goes, we would be looking for equipment that returns a much higher efficiency on water usage. And as far as the manufacturing facility goes, putting in features that allow us to essentially recapture water. You know that we might be able to further treat. And then also – and this would obviously, depend on business cases – if it got to a point where we needed the space or had the opportunity to treat water, you know, that that could be something that we look at. But that’s really getting quite far into the nice-to-have category. Based on the size of the business we are, I think the contingencies and agreement that we have with contemporaries will become increasingly more important, based on regional shortages.

I’ve read articles which are pretty amazing about breweries in the future becoming mobile. So, potentially moving around to where water is abundant or where the rain falls and the brewery moves to less water scarce areas. I think one of the big things within the brewing industry is looking at the agriculture – so who we supply raw materials from and how efficient they are as far as water usage goes – could become a bit more of a hot topic – the point of focus – because they’re a high user of water. And then who your suppliers are in terms of their footprint might also have some sort of bearing on vendor selection.

The business has a couple priorities, which we trying to kind of put our resources and focus into. We reviewed, where we sit as far as sort of a floodplain goes. So, production and production continuity. You know, increasingly as there’s more pressure from the supply and cost perspective then increasingly they’ll be a need to be creative and more efficient with resources available or just business practice.