Coopers Brewery is poised to tap the booming cider market through a distribution deal with the English cider manufacturer, Thatchers Cider.
Thatchers Gold is the second largest draught cider in the UK and Coopers will keg and distribute it to the on-premise market in Australia as part of the deal.
The contract was inked in Adelaide by Coopers’ MD, Dr Tim Cooper, and the MD of Thatchers, Martin Thatcher late last year, and Thatchers Gold is currently being put on tap in hotels across Australia.
“We expect Thatchers Gold will have a major impact on the draught cider market in Australia,” Dr Cooper said.
“It is highly regarded as one of the world’s best ciders and is a great fit within our portfolio of quality beers. We are determined to establish Thatchers Gold as a premium brand in the growing Australian cider market.”
Cooper said that Coopers had been looking at the cider market in Australia for the past three years, but had not found the right partner until now.
“Mark Goulmy, the general manager of our distribution company Premium Beverages, was contacted by Thatchers last year about a possible distribution agreement,” he said.
“Chairman Glenn Cooper and I subsequently met Martin Thatcher and his team in the UK and felt an immediate affinity with them.
“Thatchers is a fourth generation family business that produces premium quality products. It has been growing rapidly in the past 20 years and the fit seemed right. We are extremely excited about the possibilities.”
Thatcher said there were many synergies between Thatchers and Coopers. “Both companies share similar values of heritage, family history, quality and most importantly a deep rooted care for their business and their customers.
“Thatchers Gold, crafted in Somerset, the home of English cider, is a cider that represents everything that we at Thatchers cherish and we are delighted that we may soon be sharing our cider with Coopers’ customers – we hope our friends in Australia will enjoy their pint of Gold as much as we do in the UK,” Thatcher said.
Premium Beverages will also distribute Thatchers packaged cider. and Tim Cooper told Food & Drink Business that although Coopers will bring the bottled product in from the UK, it had opted to put the cider into kegs itself.
The cider is being kegged by Coopers into Coopers’ standard kegs, to enable their integration into the existing systems of hotels, clubs and bars around Australia.
"The keg line is subject to very vigilant cleaning protocols including the use of steam on line. The cider arrives sterile and we also sterile filter it again on arrival, so it is safe to put it through the keg line," Cooper said.
"While we were still negotiating, we brought a tanker in from Thatchers to see if we could do this – sterile filter the cider and put it into kegs – and that's all worked and we have been, on a low key basis, selling draught cider."
The cider market is currently one of the fastest growing sectors of the Australian liquor industry, according to Coopers, with the category growing 19 per cent annually, on average, over the past five years.
Cooper said Thatchers' status as an international, premium brand would be its key selling point in Australia.
