Metalman Brewing has its export sales in the can

Blazing a trail in Ireland with canned craft beer, Waterford company Metalman Brewing is focusing on expansion and on exports.

In January this year it became the first Irish microbrewery to set up a canning operation.

It now sells pale ale, wheat lager, and smoked porter in cans and on draught to more than 300 pubs and off licences around Ireland and has begun exporting to the UK and Italy.

The decision to can beer might be seen as brave, given that some people assume bottled beer to be of higher quality. But according to Metalman managing director Grainne Walsh, those people are mistaken.

“If beer tastes bad coming out of a can it probably tasted just as bad going into the can,” Ms Walsh said.

Metalman conducted extensive research on the bottle-versus-can issue before opting for cans.

“We discovered that we can get a better product on the shelf in a can.

"With cans you don’t have problems with deterioration of shelf life caused by light, and with a can you get a better seal than on a bottle,” she said.

Now setting out to demonstrate the quality of canned beer, Ms Walsh says this won’t be the first time that Metalman has been involved in correcting erroneous impressions.

“When I set up the company some people seemed to think that the idea of a woman setting up a brewery was totally outlandish.”

Five years on though, Ms Walsh is running a company with growing sales and exports and a staff of seven.

The doubters, she thinks, have by now abandoned that particular misconception.

Back in 2011 she was a software manager and her partner Tim Barber was a network engineer when they decided to start brewing.

While travelling in Europe and the US they developed a taste for craft beer, which they couldn’t get in Ireland.

Trying out home brewing, they volunteered at a UK brewery and talked to breweries and publicans.

“We found that Dublin pubs were interested in getting craft beer, while Waterford pubs liked the idea of having locally-brewed beer,” she said.

At the time sales of craft beer in Ireland were extremely small. “We were the 13th microbrewery to set up in Ireland; now there are 48 operational breweries in Ireland, with craft beer accounting for 1.5-2% of sales.”

For their first product, Ms Walsh and Mr Barber came up with an American-style pale ale, naming the new company after a Waterford landmark.

Initially, Ms Walsh worked on her own, using the services of a Tipperary company to produce the beer.

At the end of 2011 she set up a 3,000 sq ft brewing facility at Tycor Business Centre and by 2013, the company was supplying around 60 customers. At this point Mr Barber joined the company full-time as director of production.

“During 2014 we expanded production capacity, increased staff to six and began selling through a distributor,” she explained.

Oh yeast, why can't you respect daylight savings time and allow me the extra hour in bed? Sunday morning fermentation checks underway...

— Metalman Brewing (@metalmanbrewing) October 25, 2015

At the end of 2014, Metalman took delivery of new canning equipment and installed it in its production facility, which had doubled to 6,000 sq ft.

Expansion has continued this year as the company invested in new brewhouse facilities and tanks, increasing batch capacity to 2,400 litres.

Supported by Waterford City Local Enterprise Office in the early stages, Metalman is now assisted by Enterprise Ireland and has been approved for expansion funding in 2015.

Key events this year included the launch of cans of pale ale in January and two new products, Equinox wheat lager and Heatsink smoked porter in August.

In March, Metalman sent its first shipment to a UK distributor which sells mainly in Northern Ireland, and in September began selling to Italy.

Increasing turnover by 40-50% a year, Ms Walsh is aiming to continue growing at this pace and to increase exports to 50% within five years.

She is in discussions with a distributor in Scandinavia and is working on plans to grow sales in the UK and Italy.