Contract Manufacturing in Central Europe

Hobsons is a mid-sized regional brewery based in Shropshire, UK. It produces award winning regional ale in casks and bottles. The company started selling on Amazon UK and with significant year on year growth the opportunity arose to supply Amazon EU. However, following Brexit it became impossible to supply EU from UK and also deliveries to other European customers suffered. A transport of pallets to a distributor in Germany took 3 months.

The decision to look for a contract brewer in CEE was made end 2020 and with the profile of Hobsons beers we quickly honed in on Poland. Following the initial search, advanced discussions, on-line knowledge transfer and sample brews with 3 breweries we settled on one partner. The process took over a year due to covid/travel restrictions until the Hobsons brewing team could come to Poland to oversee the first brew of 4 products at the Polish craft brewery.

There were challenges to overcome as this was the first time British beers had been brewed in Poland according to original recipes. However, the end result was a great success with Hobsons master brewer awarding 7.5 to 9.0 points across the range.

Hobsons beers were brewed in Poland at the end of March and are already finding their way to Amazon Europe customers. New customers in Poland will be receiving first orders shortly and now we can plan Europe-wide distribution from Poland.

The retail price of Hobsons produced in Poland is similar to local craft beers and over 20% less than Hobsons imported from UK.