E-Malt.com News article: USA, OR: Hop Valley Brewing Co. growing and pushing into new markets

Hop Valley Brewing Co. is again growing as it pushes into new markets, takes on a new distributor and makes plans for another plant expansion, The Register-Guard reported on August 5.

The company, which has operated a brewery and restaurant in Springfield’s Gateway area since 2009, last year opened a brew house and tasting room in Eugene’s Whiteaker neighborhood.

Since then, the staff has doubled, to 120 employees in Eugene and Springfield, and production has more than tripled.

“We did 8,000 barrels last year; we’ll do 25,000 to 30,000 barrels this year,” said Walter Macbeth, a partner in Hop Valley. Hop Valley does not disclose revenues.

The brewery took delivery on August 4 of four new tanks, two with a capacity of 120 barrels and two with a capacity of 180 barrels. In late September, two more tanks — one with a capacity of 280 barrels, the other 240 barrels — will arrive, Macbeth said, followed by the delivery in October of “the biggest tanks we’ve ever received — two 360-barrel tanks.

“They’re so big they will be placed outside. They’re too big to fit in the building.”

All told, the company will be investing $675,000 by the end of the year in the new barrels, he said.

“We are in the process of purchasing a new bottling and canning line as well that will be installed in early 2015,” Macbeth said. “That’s a much larger bill, close to $2 million.”

But the investment is needed, he said, as Hop Valley expands into new markets with the help of its new distributor, Columbia Distributing, one of the biggest beverage distributors in the country.

Hop Valley already sells its beer along the Interstate 5 corridor in Northern California, Macbeth said. Now, it will push westward to the coast and back north into Oregon.

The brewery also will expand into Idaho, starting with the Boise area, and Washington, where it currently serves only the sliver of the state that is across the river from Portland.

Seattle is Hop Valley’s first target in Washington.

“We’ll be adding about another 14 jobs this year,” Macbeth said, “a brewer and cellerman and about 12 production line employees.”

“Our goal is to double our growth next year, to 50,000 to 60,000 barrels,” he said.

Hop Valley is benefiting from the growing popularity of craft brews among beer drinkers, Macbeth said. Nationally, U.S. craft beer sales rose 17.2 percent while overall beer sales fell 1.9 percent, according to the Brewers Association.

“People are excited about small and independent breweries,” Macbeth said. To take advantage of that excitement, however, breweries need to have three things, he said.

“You have to have great beer, you have to have great branding, and you have to have a fantastic distributor. If you are missing one of these things you are probably not going to be successful.

“You have to kind of think of it like a three-legged bar stool.”

The Hop Valley partners are reasonably confident about the stability of their three-legged stool, said Macbeth, who is also director of sales and marketing.

“We’re talking about expanding,” he said. “If all goes well over the course of the next year, we’ll be taking a look at an even greater expansion into the (adjacent) property.

“Currently, we lease a big chunk of that building and use it for production supplies,” he said, but Hop Valley also has an option to buy the property if the partners want to expand.


06 August, 2014