Brewing Blues: How Excessive Red Tape Keeps N.B. Brews Out Of Other Provinces
MONCTON – While New Brunswick may be Canada’s unofficial craft brewery capital, with the most breweries, per capita, in the nation, some N.B. brewers are frustrated by red tape complicating the process of sharing N.B. brews with the rest of Canada.
Peter Cole, owner of Nackawic-based Big Axe Brewery, and Marc Melanson, owner of Flying Boats Brewing Company in Dieppe, both told Huddle a significant challenge to getting N.B. beer into other provinces is navigating the different rules other provinces abide by.
“Every province is different, when it comes to allowing other breweries, so that makes it complicated,” Cole said.
“You can figure one out, and then go to another province and it’s completely different – that makes it difficult.”
Melanson said exporting is a continual challenge for Flying Boats on account of each province’s different barriers – what he describes as a hodge-podge of rules and regulations.
“Since they all have different rules, you have to basically choose which one has the lowest barriers that would fulfill your requirements,” he said.
“One barrier in Quebec is that you have to have a working space in the province, so you can’t just ship your beer to a depanneur – you have to basically have a working brewery or storage facility with a physical address in Quebec. You have to just pick your battles because you can’t do them all.”
Melanson and Cole have been able to get beer into Nova Scotia’s private liquor stores.
“They helped us get through the paperwork of getting through to the NSLC warehouse,” Melanson said of his experience.
“We had to go through NSLC to get beer in private stores prior to COVID and we’re not in the process of getting back into the private stores,” said Cole.
Export Efforts
Serge Nadeau, the co-owner of Dieppe-based CAVOK Brewing Company, has also successfully gotten beer into Nova Scotia Liquor Commission (NSLC) stores – and not for a lack of effort.
Two summers ago, CAVOK’s East Coast Pirates American West Coast IPA was sold on NSLC shelves.
It did well, but Nadeau is not convinced the juice is worth the proverbial squeeze of dealing with interprovincial regulations.
“It was just a lot of work and more headache – and less control, because we were not on the ground, near where our products were being sold,” said Nadeau.
Nadeau said NSLC also took a more generous share of the revenue made by his beer than the commission would have, if CAVOK brews were local to Nova Scotia.
“We decided we weren’t going to push it too much for the next few years,” he said.
Cole told Huddle the markup he’d face is an impediment to his export plans.
“If it’s feasible, there are some provinces that want you to send them product, but by the time it gets on the shelf, and at retail prices for the consumer, the cut you’ get wouldn’t make it feasible to send it,” Cole said.
“We’d not be making money off that kind of thing,” he added.
Reciprocity
Melanson’s pet peeve when it comes to exporting to New Brunswick’s neighbours is the lack of reciprocity – like in the case of P.E.I.’s liquor authority.
“In P.E.I., they allow us to apply, once a year. There is a competitive bid that goes out and asks for interest in being able to sell your beer in their liquor store,” Melanson said.
“That’s a sham, because they do it once a year, and few, if any, New Brunswick products get in there. We’re not able to offer our niche products through their channels or anything else, because of those hidden barriers.”
Cole said a similar dynamic applies to Nova Scotia: “To my knowledge, ANBL is bringing in a lot of Nova Scotian craft beer, but it’s not really reciprocal.”
Cole told Huddle some of the reasons for that may be market saturation in other provinces, causing authorities to protect their own first.
“Some provinces give a bit of pushback because they have enough representation in their own province. They’re almost protecting their own, if you will,” Cole noted.
Excessive Regulations
Nadeau, Melanson and Cole pinned the blame on excessive regulations for their troubles getting beer into other provinces.
“There are a lot of things that need to be done to get a product into other provinces. There are a lot of obstacles,” said Nadeau.
He said other provinces’ regulations focus on what they want to offer their customers.
“Some push local stuff, and it depends on the province, basically,” he said.
In the case of a failed bid to export CAVOK beer to Prince Edward Island, Nadeau said that was an impediment.
“We tried to list a few products there, but they didn’t approve the products.”
In addition to N.S. and P.E.I., CAVOK is attempting to gain a foothold in Quebec’s alcohol market.
“Quebec is hard to get into, if you’re not there and don’t have anything there already – we’re working into that,” Nadeau said.
Looking West
Some brewers are looking further west for a new market.
Hammond River Brewing Company Owner Shane Steeves’ search for a new market for his Rothesay-brewed beer took him as far as Saskatchewan, after failed bids to get his beer onto liquor store shelves in P.E.I., Nova Scotia and Ontario.
Steeves, who shipped a flat containing 55 24-packs of his brewery’s Hawaiian IPA in August, said it was difficult to get into another market.
Steeves, a subscriber to calls from liquor authorities in Nova Scotia, P.E.I. and Ontario, has sent samples, and followed specific provincial rules and guidelines, but has had no success.
“We haven’t gotten accepted … and I know other breweries have faced the same thing – it’s definitely a lot of red tape,” he told Huddle in August.
“Then, we reached out to Saskatchewan and they accepted – so that was great. Saskatchewan has been great to deal with.”
The difficulties brewers face in exporting beer, come as no shock to Nadeau.
“I’m not surprised seeing other brewers trying to get into other markets, brewers are always trying to find new markets,” Nadeau said.
Saskatchewan, however, would not be the first place Nadeau would look for a new market for CAVOK beer.
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“It’s not that easy to jump into another province. Logistics for deliveries and shipments and all that – it’s a lot of work for what it’s worth in the end, sometimes,” he said.
To get his beer shipment to the Saskatchewan Liquor and Gaming Authority (SLGA) warehouse in Regina, Steeves had to ship it to Montreal, through A.M.R. Fruiterie, at his cost – from which point, SLGA shipped it the rest of the distance across Quebec, Ontario and Manitoba.
Like Steeves, Melanson is looking westward for a new market – and conscious of the costs of doing so.
“I can only say we’re looking at western provinces because they have the most open markets compared to other provinces,” said Melanson.
“They have the most open, deregulated markets, with fewer barriers,” he added, noting he would have to be conscious of the costs of shipping his product that far, and price his beer competitively and be wary of the significant shipping costs.
While Cole would prefer to ship closer to home, he is working to get his beer into the Saskatchewan and Alberta markets.
He is planning to ship Big Axe’s Shakespeare Chocolate Oatmeal Stout to Saskatchewan within a month and is still considering which beer to send to Alberta in time for the holidays.
Best-Case Scenario
In a perfect world, Nadeau said provinces would modernize their rules around importing beer from others.
“It doesn’t make sense to see, say, B.C. change their laws to make it easier to work for P.E.I. brewers, for example – it’s far away to ship,” said Nadeau.
Cole said there is plenty of room for improvement, and suggested stronger support for local producers, and breaking the hold of Crown corporations by larger-scale privatization of Atlantic liquor markets
“I’d like to sell products everywhere in Canada, obviously, but I’d prefer to sell locally, to our neighbours, instead of shipping it all the way across the country. Financially, that’s not the best thing to do,” said Cole.
“Other products can be moved from province to province in this country, and I think it’s well overdue to be updated, for sure.”
Sam Macdonald is a Huddle reporter in Moncton. Send him your feedback and story ideas: [email protected].