Q&A: Mike Benner of SIBA

This week, Cesium Group – in association with the drinks business – sat down with Mike Benner, managing director of SIBA, the UK’s Society of Independent Brewers.

SIBA’s vision is to “deliver the future of British beer and become the voice of British brewing” – see what Mike has in store to try to achieve that below.

Paul: So Mike, please can you give me an overview of SIBA as an organisation and the objectives?

Mike: SIBA is a society of independent brewers. We were formed back in 1980s with the intention of addressing some of the issues that smaller breweries were facing at the time as they attempted to compete in a fairly consolidated market.

Since then, changes to the market, such as preferential excise duties for smaller brewers, have improved the competitive landscape but there are still ongoing issues with access to market.

With this in mind, SIBA launched a new strategic plan around 18 months ago that it is now working to and our vision within that is to deliver the future of British beer and become the voice of British brewing.

Paul: I think there’s no doubt that the work of SIBA has paved the way for the formation of many new breweries over recent years. What do you feel are some of the key drivers behind the renaissance in beer and the amount of breweries that have been set up?

Mike: I think what we’ve seen over the last few years — and it’s clearly become a trend – is that the majority of growth has been due to the innovation of small companies.

I think that craft breweries and world beers have been the real success stories in beer over the last few years. It’s actually led to a huge consumer growth in real ales and that’s now spread into other formats as well. So great beers are now available in cans, kegs, and bottles, as well as on tap.

I think technological advances in brewing have helped innovation but, particularly since 2008, the growth in craft brewing has been mainly driven by the fact that people are increasingly searching for feel-good local products that mean something to them, with genuine provenance and a story behind them.

I also think that when people tighten their belts during recessionary times one of the fallouts of that is that it takes a long time to recover and I think this kind of event leads to a concentration on quality over quantity, so the occasion becomes important and people may consume less but they’ll drink high quality. This is an area where independent breweries have delivered in spades and so I think they’ve been key drivers.

Paul: I love that idea of feel-good products made by real people. Indeed, the point you made on local relevance to people emotionally leads us to the question of whether we are seeing something new or a reinvention of what family and regional brewers have been doing for centuries. What’s your view on that?

Mike: It depends how you look at it. Given the competition from other drinks and the changing drinking habits where more beer is being drunk at home, I kind of see the whole craft revolution as something new.

However, the fact that we weren’t calling beers, craft beers, until a few years ago doesn’t mean that they didn’t exist. What has happened is the arts and crafts of brewing has opened itself beyond the kind of restraints and norms of traditional beer styles to reach out right into that global hop market and to learn things from different brewers around the world; which has created an incredible diversity of styles and flavors. And that to me is kind of a new approach. But in saying that nobody could project that what brewers in this country were doing 50 years ago, that regional level brewing, wasn’t craft-brewing because I think it was. It’s probably more of an evolution, than a new invention, so to speak.

Paul: Building on that question, a lot of regional brewers have really deep emotional connection with a particular area and by default they offered really good beers and brands that resonate with their consumer base. Do you feel that the local connection is influencing consumers?

Mike: I think that when you’ve got 1,500 brewers, that the local can start to look like a bit of a cul-de-sac unless you understand what consumers mean by local and in fact that’s something that SIBA is working on now and we plan to release our insights on this in March.

What does local mean? I think a lot of consumers would still regard trying a beer from a local brewery in Cornwall while in a pub in Berkshire as drinking a local product – albeit not one that’s from around the corner. My point being, that with so many brewers, what does local start to mean? I think they have to be careful not to label it so specifically. I think today’s consumers differentiate more between what they regard as perhaps mass-produced or global products and smaller ‘local’ products. This isn’t unique to beer either – I think increasingly consumers are more informed and opinionated about what they enjoy in food and drink.

Paul: It’s clear that craft beer has been a great success in Greater London and other major cities. Do you feel that this craft phenomenon has spread across the UK aside from just the key cities? Do you think this is becoming more of a national phenomenon?

Mike: If you look at it in population terms, most MP constituencies these days have at least one brewery and some significantly more. So if you look at it in terms of a revolution, it’s definitely a trend right across the country, not just limited to London or the Southeast.

I think there is a huge opportunity for craft brewed beer to help reduce the trend of pub closures and to grab hold of casual diners or people drinking at home and offer them different options for going out and spending their money.

Paul: What initiatives has SIBA undertaken to support craft brewing and foster the growth and development of these members?

Mike: Well one thing that I’ve championed is SIBA’s work as one of the founding members of Britain’s Beer Alliance, which I think is a great initiative and which provides an umbrella for all different groups to campaign for beer. However, we still advance our own members and work closely with them to position local genuine British independent craft breweries in a particular way. We are doing lots of work at the moment and the industry will see a lot more from SIBA on this issue over the coming months. Now we’ve built our own professional marketing team, we’ll be re-branding the organisation, launching a new website and looking at other means of promoting our beer products. All within the kind of umbrella of everyone working together to say, you know what, there’s a beer for all different occasions.

Paul: In addition, what specific support do you offer?

Mike: What’s unique about SIBA is that while we campaign for and promote our member’s beers, we’re a very practical organization and we provide practical solutions. We talked earlier about access to markets and of course SIBA is famous for directing the scheme that has evolved into BeerFlex, so that we are able to provide commercial access to our members into almost any environment, whether that’s straight consumer or small packs, pubs or indirect working with other distributors and companies.

Paul: I know you also talked earlier about the networking platform and trying to bring suppliers to the table to help members develop and that has a huge amount of operational support that you give?

Mike: And that is a great success story. I mean we’ve got around 300 supplier members now and what happened, of course, is that as the number of brewers has grown, so too has the number of suppliers. So it’s a huge economic success story.

Paul: We talked a little at the [Cesium Thought Leadership] event that the recent high-profile acquisitions, we were focusing on Meantime at that point, with obviously Camden thereafter. It’s clear that the global brewers are sitting up and taking notice of what’s happening in the craft space. What is your view on the implications of some of these acquisitions for the sector?

Mike: On the one hand, it’s clearly a success story. When you have something that starts small, gets bigger and then gets taken over, you could view that as being a sign of success. However, there are alarm bells around it I think. I mentioned earlier that the sector’s worked very hard to create new excitement for the beer category and I think it is craft brewers that have done that. They have established this whole concept of independence and locality and have brought diversity and excitement to the sector. I don’t think we’d want to see that watered down by confusion amongst consumers and the source and provenance of random beers. I think it’s important that we actually continue to shout for genuine independent breweries and SIBA will do that. Now obviously there’s a competitive marketplace and people will do what they’re going to do, but it is our job to enable consumers to inform consumers that they understand the provenance and where products comes from.

Paul: What do you think the future looks like for beer category, what trends and projections do you perceive in the months and years to come?

Mike: I think the beer market across the UK has been in long-term decline. What we have now is this kind of fragile stability and we are seeing a continuing increase in our members’ share of that marketplace.

Additionally, by working collectively to put beer on the tables of restaurants and hotel bars across the country, we will create new marketplaces, new occasions and new opportunities for our national drink and that’s something we’re determined to do.

So I think we’re seeing continued stability but not huge growth over the next few years in the overall marketplace. But we will see craft breweries, independent breweries taking an increased share. So, an exciting future for beer and I think it will always remain a fascinating industry that brings so much to our economy and society.

Paul: I know we’ve talked about some of the changes at SIBA that you’ve instilled since you came on board, for example the professional marketing team and website. What do you see as the future and what can we expect from SIBA in the future?

Mike: That’s a very good question. I think it’s important that SIBA increases its profile with politicians and the media. Obviously we’re putting a lot of effort into ensuring we are as effective as we can possibly be for our members. From a consumers’ perspective, I think the important thing is that they are informed about what great beer is all about and what choice they’ve got, whether that’s about style or provenance, so that they do understand what they can expect from an independent craft brewery compared to other beer.