#91 Brewing Change: A Conversation with Sawmill Brewery’s Kirsty McKay on Sustainability, B Corps, and the Power of Purpose

There we go. We are live on Facebook site. This podcast is being filmed before a live studio audience. Hopefully, hopefully there'll be some people joining us. That'd be pretty cool. Yeah. And it won't be my mum because I don't think she knows what I do. So in fact it should definitely be a Shamai a Borodar today because today is Deed guil Dawi Sant St. David's Day. For all you Welsh people listening, there's possibly one or two of you. Hopefully you've eaten your leaks, you have petted your dragons and all is well in the world of daffodils and general Welshness. So, Yes, a special St. David's Day episode. We have to. We'll talk to our guests in a minute. Maybe we can get a special David's Day beer brewed.

Oh yeah. Imagine the Welsh just like it's strong. Do they?

Yes, obviously. So, yeah. Welcome back to our regular listeners. Welcome Shamai, if you are a new listener. Thank you for tuning in. Yes, with me today, I have got Kirsty from Sawmill Brewery. Kirsty, how's it going?

Oh, great, Tim, really good, thank you. Thanks for having me.

No worries. It's been a while in the making. There was, I feel like there was a bit of podcast hesitancy from the Sawmill team. But you know, we're here now. Good things come to those who wait and, and all that. So for people possibly outside of New Zealand, because we have, we have got some listeners outside of New Zealand and for people who for some reason have. I mean I am, I was thinking I am literally your ideal customer because I'm a middle aged bloke and I like B Corp. So a craft beer, B Corp is kind of like. Doesn't get better than that for me. But yeah, for people who don't know who you are and what you do. Yeah. Tell us a little bit more about. About what Sawmill is all about.

So Sawmill is an independent brewery. We're based in Northland, actually technically Auckland, but we say Northland because it feels more north up here. We're about an. And a bit north of Auckland city. We're on the coast. Sawmill. The history of Sawmill is, goes back to Lee, which is a fishing village about 10 minutes from here. And a family took over the existing sawmill which had been operating since the 1860s and they converted it into a music venue and a cafe. And then an English couple who lived here came along and rented a shed off that family and the Guinness family and started to make beer in the shed. Mike and I then came along. We'd been living in Littleton and moved up here for work. Mike was made redundant and he was doing well, about to do some home brewing and looking around for opportunities and he asked Peter and Decima who had set up the brewery up there if he could come up for a day. And so he did and he came back from that day I was pregnant and we had a little baby as well and I was terrible morning sickness actually. So I was in bed and he came back and he said Peter and Desma are keen to sell the brewery. And so it was. It was not even a long story short. It was just a short story and we bought it from them and Mike was brewing up there about a month later. It was really small. It was probably for them, for them as a couple. I think they'd spend two or three days max there a week.

Yeah, the volumes were tiny and it was just this induction by fire for both of us really. Like we'd have the babies up there filling bottles.

It was a really crazy time.

Hashtag child labor.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Oh, they didn't help. They were even too small. They do now though. Now it's child labor hashtag for sure. So yeah, sawmill grew from. From there and we outgrew the premises and we moved. We're about 10 minutes down the road from where we were before. We've got. It was a. Just a beer paddock here and we had some clever local people help us design the restaurant which is attached to the breweries. We've got a purpose built building. We're on a beautiful farm really here just out of Maracana which is a wee village north of Auckland.

We're now which I'm sure we'll get to New Zealand's only B Corp certified brewery. We're one of the only rural breweries in New Zealand really which has given us all kinds of opportunity which is what we call problems these days. Right Tim?

Love it.

Yeah. But also genuinely has given us lots of opportunity to do things differently. So that's where we're where we are now. We've got a team of about 50 here, counting all our restaurant team. Really amazing team of people. And yeah it's been very he and hectic ride over the last 13 years.

It's. I mean. Yeah, well I guess we'll get into some stuff as well because you've had a couple of significant opportunities.

Yeah, yeah, that I know.

So I mean what was your. Was your guys background and I just imagine. Yeah, I kind of feel like there's A. There's a similar sort of journey in some ways in that, you know, my wife and I had our daughter, she's almost 12, so around about similar sort of time and when my wife went back to work and she's called Lee and so we have been to Lee and I feel like she should claim Lee as her birthright as I have got a really sneaky long term plan to become mayor of Timaru. And I'm going to make everyone, basically everyone has to change their name to Tim. And we will be an enclave for Tims from all around the world to come and live in the one town and we'll have like the. This, the global epicness of Tims from everywhere. That's my long term plan.

Oh my gosh. There's probably already a lot of people called Tim.

They should be, I think like you should get some rights discount if you're, if you're a Tim.

I just, you know, definitely is someone think of the beautiful village. It really is. It's a beautiful place. So good name.

But yeah, we, we had a bit of a similar background. My wife, you know, after our daughters start going to preschool, she had an opportunity to connect with a previous competitor from her old industry, old job in social media, web development, web design. And so they started their own business. And so for a year, you know, they were earning no money. And then I got made redundant in late 2015 and I'm like, okay. I keep talking to everyone saying they should be a B corp. No one seems to be that interested. Maybe I should just start my own business. And so yeah, tough sort of interesting conversations with young, young small humans with significant life changes. Um, so yeah, going from hey Kirsty, I was thinking about maybe getting into home brewing to hey, how about we just go all in and buy a brewery? I'm not, not even home brew, pub, brewery. It's just like, let's just go all in all.

Totally. So he never actually finished his first batch of home brew. So Mike is probably one of the only brewers in New Zealand that's never put down a batch of home brew. But we were big beer fans. We'd been living in Littleton and we used to go down to this liquor store that was just us and the sailors really that would go in there and they had a really good range of Emerson's beer and also Harrington's was just through the tunnel. So we had really got into beer and we had had. We had been having conversations about.

Getting involved in the brewing industry or at least we would wanted A business that was. That we created something tactile because to come back to your earlier question, our backgrounds, neither of us were doing that. Mike had been an oyster farmer and an exporter most of his career, exporting primary produce, vegetables, wine, oysters, meat, all sorts of things. And I had a background in law, so I'd worked for the Refugee Appeals Authority and then had a stint in South America with the unhcr. And then I'd been in general practice. So I really, I loved law and I worked for some amazing people.

We were kind of looking for something, a family business, I guess. We didn't really know what we were getting ourselves into, obviously, but that was where we were thinking. So we were already, you know, it wasn't completely out of the blue, but certainly the opportunity with Sawmill was very fortuitous.

I think it's interesting, there's a bunch of people we've interviewed on the podcast. It seems to be a lot recently. We've interviewed some of the big companies like Unilever, anz.

Different Pathway. You know, you're dealing with people in a corporate environment. But a lot of the SME B corps that we talk to, the common theme seems to be, I saw there was an opportunity and we gave it a go because a bunch of, a bunch of companies, some, some more recent ones, like Jamie from Twice Cups, the edible cups, you know, just, hey. And again, similar vibe, like family owned business. Him, his mum and dad and his partner, like, they're like, let's just give it a go. Yeah, but I think this is the, you know, what is it? Fortune favors a prepared mind. You know, like, yes, there's an opportunity, but you still have to take it. You still have to be willing to risk and give it a go. And yeah, there seems to be, I don't know, I'm sure, I mean, obviously there's a big startup community in general, but I don't know. We seem to be connecting with a lot of people on our podcast recently where there's been like, yeah, we should do this and yeah, you know, those kind of sliding door moments of, yeah, almost we shouldn't we.

But then you wonder if, if you would have just found another door, you know, if that door had shut. Yeah, who knows?

But I can't imagine in a parallel quantum universe. Yeah, like, yeah, doing something else.

Yeah, yeah.

Who knows? Who knows? So the refugees in South America. Well, refugee law, South America, unhcr. I feel like that's something we need to explore. So how did you get into that? Like, so I guess you Know, the question we like to ask is, you know, you've got a business that's a B corp, that's about business for good, fundamentally. Clearly you've got a background in doing good. But has that always been the case? Like, were you raised and. And sort of, like, was going through school and then uni? Were you always like, yeah, I want to do good with law, because obviously, you know, there's a lot of lawyers who, you know, will sit there defending some really bad people for tons of money and will sleep at night on their satin cheeks, satin sheets, and be pretty cool with it. But clearly going into sort of defending refugees and working for the un, that's a particular type of person. So. Yeah. Has that always been your vibe or did you fall into that or. Yeah. How did that happen?

I definitely really.

Loved. So there were other things I loved. I love anthropology, I love geography. So I loved thinking about and working in different countries. So when I worked for the Refugee Appeals Authority, we were hearing the appeals of people who had come to New Zealand, then applied for refugee status. So we were looking into their stories from countries all over the world, really, where they had difficulty in looking at political situations a lot. And my friend Prue Tyler, she described law recently as kind of the intersection of humanities and politics and history and English. And I loved it for that. I didn't ever set out to be. Have a particular, you know, legal career in mind. I just love the study of it and what I learned when we were, I guess, when we were studying. And another friend, Melissa Crawford, she was the one who drew my attention to this role and she knew me better than I knew myself, I guess, because I absolutely loved working there and hadn't ever considered that I could do that kind of law. And the opportunity in Colombia was just through people I'd met there.

I loved it. I loved travel. I went to boarding school when I was quite young, which gave me a real sense of independence, I think. I did an exchange to Europe when I was at school for a year. And I. I just. I loved. I love and still do. I love traveling, I love meeting people. And so maybe I was motivated by that probably in my adult life.

My sister's been a big inspiration for me in terms of doing good. And I think that's. You know, we were raised like that too.

So I think that it's always been there for me. Yeah.

Nice. So did you grow up in Christchurch as well, or did you.

No, I grew up on the East Cape, actually. Yeah. So north of Gisborne.

Nice and where's Mike from?

He's from Amaro.

Nice.

Yeah. So he'll be near.

Almost.

Almost.

Almost to almost. I mean, if he wants to change his name to Tim, he can come and be part of my master plan. Yeah, yeah, they should be. They should really be into meditation down there, really, shouldn't they?

Yeah, they should totally. Well, that. Yeah, they probably are.

Who knows?

They're pretty quirky.

It's. Yeah. If you're listening from outside of New Zealand. Yeah. Come and check out all the rooms.

Definitely check out.

So I think we had, you know, we both had backgrounds in, well, rural or small towns. You know, we were always looking to be somewhere in a community and certainly when you are a community business that you do want to be a good business, that. That becomes critical, really. And I think that's where we started off with sawmill, that you. You want to be a business that serves your community well and that is adding value. So right from then, if your customers are the people that you see at the shop in the evenings or at school or whatever, then you really do want to be a good business. You know, they're not anonymous to you, which I think.

Yeah, well, there's a couple of things there. For me, the village. I grew up. So I grew up in a rural village in Oxfordshire, northwest of London. And you know, the local pub, I think it was this. This village Oakley. So if anyone's listening from the south of England, if you know, Oakley, near Tame and Bicester, I think it was called the Shandos Arms, was the local pub. And you know that. That was the heart of the community.

Yeah, totally.

You know, people. Obviously I wasn't going down because I was way too young, but, you know. Yeah, my dad would go down there and you know, and I think that's the. I guess particularly from the. On the British side of things, the local pub is where, you know, it's community, it's connection, it's mental health, you know, it's all of those things. Plus you get to have nice cheeky beer.

Yeah, totally.

Obviously. Hashtag drink responsibly.

Yes. And it is trick. Like, that's a good point. It's tricky to. On the one hand, you know, like, it can be conflicting to be a good local business and also be.

A business that produces alcohol. And it's not a. It doesn't always sit easily.

But at the same time, you know, people do gather here and I hope that they do have good experiences here and good experiences when they are buying sawmill and. And we'll probably get to this. But we've added, you know, quite a lot of other products to our range now with our non alcoholic and low alcoholic beers. And I think we all feel really proud of those for that reason.

Yeah, yes, it's tough. There's a guy, Chris Williamson, he has a podcast with like billions of listeners and he, he used to be a club promoter in the northeast of England and I listened to a snippet of his podcast on a YouTube reel or something this morning and he said, you know, he used to be lambasted by the non alcohol kind of people saying, oh, how dare you be promoting alcohol, you know, getting people really drunk. And then he quit alcohol and, and then he got lambasted by the, by the pro alcohol lobby saying, oh, you're a sellout, you know, but you're still promoting drinking beer and yet you're not drinking beer. But as he said, you know, which I think is quite a good quote, you know, give, give me an occasion where, you know, having a couple of beers didn't make the night more fun and you kind of go, well, a couple, yeah, you know, just to loosen yourself up, you know, get funnier, you know, you're less slightly inhibited. There is a sweet spot. Yeah, A couple of beers. Most people are better humans. Yes. It's when it gets into the 20, 30 beers, people are fighting, you know, obviously the, you know, the physical medical downsides of alcoholism and over drinking. Totally, yeah. In general. A couple of beers every now and then with your mates. I mean, a couple of weekends ago there were some challenging conversations happening in the house with our youngest, well, with our only child. And yeah, it got to the point on Friday, I'm so I'm done. I actually just need to go to the pub and have a beer. And I rang a couple of mates and just said I just, just need a beer and I need to talk shit with a couple of blokes because I live in a house with my wife, my daughter and my mother in law. So I'm like, yes, I just need out. I had a couple of beers and then ended up going for a curry, the curry house in our little subdivision down here. And I got back home and I was a different person. So you kind of gave, you know, sure, if I'd gone out, had 20 beers, came back, smashed the place up and continued the arguments that were happening. Yeah, different story.

But yeah, I think, you know, our biggest selling pack beer now is our non alcoholic beer.

Wow.

And yeah, and so I think it's almost the, it's not the alcohol. The alcohol isn't the.

Isn'T the important. But I don't think to people anymore. It's the community, it's the connection.

Yeah.

And I guess that's where we've found it traditionally. But you can actually take the alcohol part of it out, leave everything else there.

Yep.

And it still works. I think that's pretty exciting really.

Yeah, yeah. Is there any research going in to. Because I guess part, part of the, the fun or the joy of having alcohol in a controlled manner is, you know, it's the buzz you get from it. So is there any. Have you been looking into any other, you know, substances or you know, natural ingredients that you could maybe put in so you get the taste and the, and the flavor. Although it is, it's always quite funny. So you look back to when you had your first beer and you go, oh my God, this is disgusting. Like, why do you all drink this? And you almost have to like train yourself. I certainly felt as a young bloke, you know, it's like you have to train yourself to like beer.

Yeah.

Which is why I think a lot of young people start on shandies or, or whatever or rattlers to sort of, okay, yeah, I'm in it, I'm drinking it. And then whereas now, you know, obviously I've got my, as we said before, you know, my Easy Rewalker ipa. You know, the middle aged gentleman's beer of choice, B Corp and, and Hoppy, you know. Yeah. It's interesting. Yeah. So have you looked into that or is there anything going on?

No, I think we've just what we've noticed, you know, with Bear Beer we get a lot of feedback about our non alcoholic be a beer. And people, people are thrilled to have the taste. They're thrilled to be able to maybe have the ritual.

Yep.

And they aren't missing the alcohol at all. They, they're getting like whatever they doing the, the ritual of opening a beer and sitting in your chair and the garden or meeting your friend and having a beer. It's all there. It wasn't actually the alcohol that you needed at all. You just needed the other parts of it. But we get that feedback a lot and it's awesome for us, you know, to be able to be, I guess, way more inclusive by offering a beer like that. So we have a couple of those and we have a beer that's super low on alcohol as well. And yeah, we get amazing feedback from people about those beers and we've put a lot of work into making sure they Taste really good. So you're still. You still get that? Yeah, you get the taste, you get the ritual, you get the connection.

Turns out you didn't need.

You didn't need.

Don't want that. Don't need or don't want the alcohol.

It's a fair comment. It would be. I think it would be really interesting to see what the kind of like crossover link is between, I don't know, that there's seemingly growing interest in sort of psychoactive substances. You know, a lot of research going into.

What's the word I'm looking for, like the ayahuasca type substances. There's research going on in University of Auckland. I think it came out of UCL in London. One of the research team came over. So, yeah, look, looking into. Oh, what's the word I'm looking for? There's the classification of the drugs. But anyway, you know what I mean? Like, there's a lot of research that some of these psychoactive substances can reduce depression, can help you get off nicotine and other addictive substances. Maybe.

Yeah, I don't know.

I think it'd be really interesting. I personally think that'd be quite interesting to think about. Yeah. What. What other ingredients could you put in a beer that maybe did give you that. That little buzz as well?

Yeah.

It's almost like, you know, could you do the same for cigarettes, you know, or vapes, you know, could you make it into a product that gives you the buzz and the feeling, but without any of the negative side effects? And that's. That's a very B Corp kind of concept, isn't it? How do we maximize the good that we're doing and start taking out the potential for harm?

Definitely. And it will be really interesting to see. I mean, I know that B Corp already, you know, it's part of the disclosure statement. It does ask whether you produce alcohol, but it does exclude beer and wine. And I have never asked why it is they do that.

Yeah, that's an interesting one. Yeah. Because when we talk to people about the controversial industries, it's like, yeah, boozers in tobacco is not. They've obviously done.

Which is cultural, I think. Really?

Yeah. You know, I think it's. Yes. Like you say, sort of.

It's not, it's not science based.

Yeah, it's. It's. Yeah. In general, tobacco has become the Persona non grata. Alcohol the sort of the, the cousin getting away with it still in the background. Yeah. Yeah.

And I think it's not a. It's not a. I don't have a answer for that completely. I guess I've gone through all kinds of iterations of it in my mind. If we were to stop producing, it wouldn't reduce the overall amount of alcohol produced. You know, it would just be a void that would be filled anyway. So where I kind of come back to is, okay, well, we'll do this in the most responsible way we can. We'll make the most inclusive products we can, hence the non alcoholic beer. And we'll do it in the most environmentally and socially responsible way possible, which is how we end up being B Corp certified. So for now that's what we'll do. We'll just do the best job we can. Yeah.

And I think, yeah, we were chatting before we went live and that that's really all we can ask of anyone is do the best with what you've got and have that mindset of wanting to be better, wanting to work out, you know, because a lot of this stuff is great. There's no.

Yeah.

You know, like we said, the community, the social benefits of having a drink.

Yeah.

Yes, there are some downsides, but yeah, not for everyone. You know, there's a slick group of people who, you know.

Yeah, yeah.

Alcohol is going to make them do really stupid things, but there's a large group of people who, you know, it's, it's an overall net. Okay.

So, yeah. And for now let's just try and do it as best we can. And I think, you know, we did talk about it before we started. We were talking about the dairy industry and. Or generally a big business that certify, you know, but. And big, big businesses make a big difference. And those of us operating in industries like alcohol, maybe we can also make a difference by doing things this way. So it's kind of where we've got to.

Yeah, no, totally. Yeah. I think.

Yeah. The opportunity for impact and change that larger companies have is just.

Yeah.

Exponential. Because they've got typically more people, more money, more budget, more reach.

Yeah.

D da da da. So, you know, a 1% change in direction of a really big company versus a 10% change of direction for a small company. It's just. Yeah. Or.

What'S what I'm looking for? Magnitude.

Magnitude.

Degrees of magnitude.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. And it's great. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And yeah, there's. I mean, but I get it. It's tough. People look at, I'll use the N word and Nespresso. People look at those big companies and go, you know, they've done things in the past, but you know, as, as we were saying beforehand, you know, if people are listening to this on an IBM computer, did you know that IBM supported the Nazis hunting down people in Europe to, to commit genocide? Well, does that mean that we now just get rid of IBM? Similarly, vw, Hugo Boss, both suppliers to the ss, you know, but I, I kind of, it makes me, I don't know, not laugh, but it's just, it's an interesting sort of cultural reference for me that when you go over the Bridge of Remembrance here in Christchurch, the first shot behind it is Hugo Boss and you kind of go, so we got the supplier of uniforms to the SS directly in front of the Bridge of Remembrance for the men and women who died in both the world wars against that sort of regime. You kind of go, does no one else see the.

So yeah, it's irony.

It's. Yeah, the irony.

It's, I think too when you've been through the certification process and this I guess is more an experience for existing B Corps and you see someone like Nespresso certify, you know, that they have had to do so much work.

To get that certification and, and any change from a business is a great thing. So let's all. I think, you know, somebody said we all need to be doing this imperfectly, not a few of us being perfect. So I think it's great actually.

That's a, that is, I think you've summed it up, have everyone do it imperfectly rather than everyone doing it perfectly. That is a great summary of that whole thing. I'm going to be stealing that I.

Believe and possibly and also, I mean from an education point of view, those bigger businesses have the, the reach and the budget to tell people about what B Corp is and that it's helpful as well for consumers in the end because the SMEs like us don't always do such a crack hot job of that.

Yeah. Although I do remember though, I don't know how many years ago this was, but there was a, an advert for, for New World, which is one of the two supermarket chains we have here in New Zealand. And they highlighted you.

Yeah.

And there was like this 5 second segment where you talked about B Corp and I literally, I almost fell off the couch once. I was like, oh my God, like we've made it, we've got.

No one knew what it was, Tim. Like that was probably 20, 2019 or something like that. Yeah, 2020 maybe.

Pandemic.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And even we struggled to know how to talk about it. Then. Which we discussed as well, that it's not an easy thing to sum up.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. How did you come across B Corp? Because when did you.

Oh, yes.

Certified.

I think I first came across it. Do you know when all birds certified. I might have come across their certification or it was either them or.

I think you were before all birds.

Yeah, I think we were too. I might have been New Belgium in the States. I saw that they. Are they still certified? They were then.

They are.

We'd already moved to this farm where we are now, and we talked a lot about, you know, we really want to build a great business. We'd had certain, like.

Growth that was based on leaderage that we'd been aiming for, but I guess that was for the other kind of sustainability. That's a big part of sustainability, which is financial. And we wanted. We'd already been doing. We already did quite a lot of stuff for our community and environmentally, but we wanted to kind of grade ourselves. You know, we wanted a. We wanted a measure. And so we were kind of looking around how we going to do this. We sort of had this idea that we'd have to write this all down ourselves. And I was really overwhelmed by that. And now I. Once I saw the B Corp certification, I can see why I was overwhelmed. You know, it's pretty hard to come off with something like that off the cuff. So we came across it and honestly it was just exactly what we needed. We needed it to be broad, ranging across the business, measurable. So we started. We started the process and that was a very, very long two years it took. So I ended up doing.

Really managing it, I guess, and doing most of it. And it would often be the bottom of my list because when you have a small business and a family, you're just treading water a lot of the time.

So it took a really long time. We were doing a lot of the things.

We needed to be, but it was difficult to, you know, some of them weren't written down in policy, but it was also difficult to prove a lot of it. And there was very little and remains. This is a difficulty with our second certification, it remains really difficult to get comparative data. So we need to use the U.S. growers association data. They. They really good at canvasing their members. In New Zealand, we just don't have any data. So it was. It was a long process. It mostly sat with me. I was despairing at times that we'd ever get it finished. And eventually in 2019, we got certified and it was just felt like A huge achievement. Would I do it differently next time? Hell yes.

What I've called you. Yes, definitely. But having gone through it ourselves, I. I felt like I had such a thorough understanding of it and of our business and of the opportunity to do more. So I wouldn't necessarily recommend that, but I did get a lot out of doing it that way the first time. That was 2019. Yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

I mean, I was the same when I did my first small business. Young family, wife, self employed. Me, self employed. You get to Friday and you're like, yeah, I could go and open up that B Corp thing or I could have a sawmill. Beer. Yeah, yeah, sit down, have a beer.

Because it's been a big week.

So. Yeah.

Yeah. And it was. It was tricky, you know, working out. It just seemed like there were some big hurdles. How would we get over this? How would we prove that we were doing it this way and as far as we knew no one else was or things like that. And that remains difficult, that data and I. Yeah, I think that's probably the case for a lot of small businesses certifying.

Yeah, it certainly is. Yeah. If you're in a sector that has an industry, a good, you know, an established industry body. So like if you're in general manufacturing or.

Yes.

General retail or wholesale, it's. There's typically a. An industry group that's running big conferences regionally, you know, New Zealand, Australia, us, uk. So there's quite often benchmarking data that you can get. But yeah, when you're like a small service business, like, like me, like, how do I benchmark against. There's no data for, you know. Yeah, small, under 10 teams of service companies in terms of, you know.

Yeah.

Any data.

So, yeah, I think the great thing about the American brewers for us though is that they're actually really ahead of the curve.

Sometimes they. It's because of a lack of resources, like water in California, you know, so they're great on their water use.

Landfill, things like that. So, yeah, it's good. Like the benchmarking against them is robust.

Nice. And have you connected with other B Corp brewers in the States directly?

Yeah, we have. There's some great breweries that are doing amazing things that are not B Corp as well. I haven't been over, hopefully going to go this year. But Mike, Mike has. He's been to Russian River, Sierra Nevada, New Belgium. You know, the. The scale is massive compared to us. I think Sierra Nevada is bigger than lion in New Zealand.

Yeah.

But it's really inspiring. They do all sorts of cool stuff. I mean, New Belgium was employee owned for a while there. It's not anymore, but yeah, so they're doing some really cool stuff over there and they're really generous B corps, you know, with their knowledge. I think it's a great community in that respect.

Yeah. And Fat Tire is a very nice beer from New Belgium.

Yeah, that's very nice.

Whenever I've been to the States, that's the one I'll try and look out for as well as when I, when I, when I do travel, I always like to try and try a local beer. It's like, yes, show me, show me a local brewery. Let's, let's give it a go.

Yeah.

And so. Well, quick question on that. Yeah, so because I like in New Zealand, as I've said, you know, typically Sawmill, it's my go to. If, if I go to the supermarket to get a beer or if I'm in a pub, I'll try and, you know, find Sawmill to support you guys. But there seems to be so many craft beers and there's so many little unique brands popping up and then they've got a special. The question I've always had is how do you engender customer loyalty with a sector of people who seemingly. And other guys I know who drink craft beer, but yeah, they want to try.

Yeah.

So how do you keep on top of that? They do. There's definitely a sector even within, even within one person, you know, there'll be a part of them that wants new beer all the time and they might buy new beer all the time and then they might also just go back to their reliable 6er of hilsnut or Lager or an IPA or whatever that they also buy regularly. And so then you've really got to meet both parts of the market. So you've got to be doing new things all the time, which is also great for our team at Sawmill. They get to, you know, there's a lot of creativity, a lot more experimentation and then when it comes to those corbes that people are buying regularly, then it's about consistent quality. And so that is not that easy. That takes a lot of hard work to be consistently reliable.

So, yeah, that's kind of where it sits, I think. Yeah. The seasonal part of the market is probably smaller than it's been in the last few years. Yeah, it can be quite time consuming. You'll know. As a beer drink, I like to go and spend half an hour in the bottle shop every week choosing your new seasonals and maybe people don't always have the energy for that. Yeah.

Yeah. So it's a bit of a, it's a bit of a mix and I think there's a lot of people who drink good beer who aren't necessarily interested in all of that. They just want a good beer and to get on with their lives. Yeah, I think we serve those people well.

You know, it certainly does seem every now and then when I go down to the local supermarket that's got a pretty cool range of craft beer, you know.

Yeah.

It's typically a Friday or a Saturday night and it's like, okay, yeah, might need a beer. And there's normally like a row of six middle aged blokes with a small human rolling their eyes going, would you just choose a bloody beard that.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, come on, just grab.

One and go, just get one. It's like, no, but that one's got a really cool bottle and. Oh, I haven't seen this one before. But the sawmill, you know, they are big.

Yeah, yeah. And they're definitely really vocal and engaged with what you're doing and it is an important part of the business and an interesting part. We have a really cool series we do called the Aotearoa series. So we make a new beer every month. Sometimes it's packaged and that it's always a beer that all the ingredients are from New Zealand and we tell a story behind the beer. So we're talking about the hop growers, we're talking about the malt, the family that grow the malt and mill the malt that we buy, we're talking about Haraway's Oats which we use in some of our beers. An amazing New Zealand owned company. From dinner, we're talking about the brewers, people that have contributed a lot to the industry. So it's a really, really cool series that's a new beer all the time. But also we always like to kind of, I guess talk about the people because you know, ingredients make better people.

Yeah, nice. And obviously that resonates with, with the consumer.

Hello, yeah, sorry, I've got a check.

Here we go. Sorry. And clearly, clearly that's resonating with the consumers because. Yeah, yeah, just I guess in my younger days, you know, you just, I guess you fall into the advertising of the large commercial breweries and they got slick adverts on TV and yeah, sure, I'll drink a Shmenican or whatever. But yeah, it's interesting. We definitely are seeing an increasing trend more broadly, globally where consumers are now asking the question to the retailer. Hey, but, but who, who does make this beer? Like where are the ingredients from this thing? And yeah, distribution, you know, European and US distributors. We've had two people ring us in the last couple of weeks say, hey, I need to get B Corp done because I'm about to be dropped by a US distributor because they, they need to know more about how we make our stuff. So I think you're clearly far ahead on that and it is cool because yeah, it just connects you to, it's almost like the, you know, the gratitude thing, you know, thank you to the person who picked my piece today that, you know, part of my dinner, you know, just connecting to that and under. But I think, you know, from a purpose perspective, it's really important for the people at both ends of the sort of the value chain to understand that, you know, you're a family run business, you know, that that's cool. You know, we should ideally want to support the good people doing good things and you're supporting all these other local people and, and the, the purpose that hopefully, yeah, everyone feels from that sense of contribution and connection to supporting local and, and doing good and particularly for yourselves where you can prove that you're doing a bunch of good on top of making great tasting beer. Yeah, yeah.

And the obligation for sure, you know, doesn't rest slightly on our shoulders too that we.

We owe our community a great deal. Immediate community, physical community here and also the beer community to do, to do the best we can. And I think that's really what drives us now, particularly in the environmental space. Yeah, and I think those are the stories we mostly tell about B Corp are the environmental ones because as a manufacturer the assessment is quite heavily weighted towards your environmental impact and rightly so. And we've, yeah, we've, we're just kind of on a roll with that. There's so many great things happening and great things our team have done and that's where we think we can, you know, we think we're a New Zealand leader in that space and maybe the.

Impact of it can be wider than that, a wider manufacturing impact because there'll always be manufacturers.

Yeah.

So how do we do a better job?

Yeah, yeah. There's definitely, like I say, you know, this increasing interest. People want to know beyond, even beyond the manufacturer. Like I say, they want to know like who, who are the people supplying your hops? Who are the people supplying your malt? They want to do that. So. Yeah, yeah. And like I say, manufacturing is, it's at the heart of all industries so, yeah, it does have a big role to play. And yeah, I guess also increasingly, with mandatory disclosures around social and environmental performance for the big end of town, you know, increasingly people are going to need to know what you're doing and how you're doing it.

Yeah, yeah.

So what would sort of the highlights would be called? What were the areas maybe that you were like, yeah, that doesn't surprise us that we scored pretty well here. Were there other areas that you're kind of like, oh, we scored pretty well here, but we weren't expecting that. And was there anywhere where you were like, okay, we didn't even know that was the thing. That's a bit.

Definitely all of those things. All of those things. I think we were really gratified by what we were doing.

In terms of our environmental impact. Things like, you know, we've reduced our waste to landfill to.

What average is less than 10 kgs a week, which is less than the average New Zealand household. So that's a massive achievement. And that, that's really cool because that's not a piece of tech that you bring in and, you know, no one has anything to do with it. That's a team effort. So every single person in the team needs to contribute to a goal like that for it to happen. So I think I'm particularly proud of that. It's really visible, it's replicable by other businesses.

Yeah. And you can see it, you can see the difference. Whereas you can't see a carbon emission. You know, whether you have 1 or 0.1 or 10 attached to something, you can't. That is. That's not immediately obvious and that's generally a tech solution, so not something that everyone in the sawmill team can contribute to directly. Whereas waste is great.

How have you got your waste down to lower than the average house?

Just through the rest, like, you know, boring kind of basic way of doing it. You just tuck it all out. Or in our case, we'd pick reporting periods and we'll write down every single thing that's going in the rubbish. This is not to say recycling is the answer at all, but it certainly brings a awareness and a mindfulness to your waste. And then we look at everything that's going in the rubbish and we're like, can we do something else with that? Do we even need it in the first place? So a great example is we were using, I don't know, 14, 15,000 sacks of grain every year. So all our grain was delivered from Gladfield, an amazing business in Canterbury, not far from, you in Dunsandle and they would deliver it all in these, I think they're 25 or 40 kg plastic sacks.

We actually started to recycle those probably.

Five years ago with plastic. So that was good but it was still a single use product. Then with Gladfield support we actually put in some big 15 metric ton grain silos. So now we have four of those. So now our grain is delivered loose and that's 12, 13,000 less sacks of grain that we need to buy every year. So sometimes it's source reduction, sometimes it's finding another place for that rubbish to go. We push back on our suppliers a lot so we chose our label supplier because they were able to take back and recycle the backing of the labels. Once they gone to the bottles you're left with all this white, you know, miles of white kind of plasticky stuff. So they, they recycle that and we chose them on that basis also. There's heaps of times when you're just stuck with, you know, there aren't, there isn't a lot of choice when it comes to.

Quite a few of our bigger inputs, things like cans, glasses, cardboard, hops, mold, you know, we're lucky to have some amazing suppliers. We also don't have a great deal of choice and so I think we're also not that big. So when we did it we did a supplier sort of a survey and some of them don't even answer, you know, don't even bother to answer the survey.

But you know, just keep squeaky hinge, keep asking questions and keep hoping that people will find a new solution. We've started working with Main Freight recently and they have quite a good emissions dashboard because they work with a lot of corporates and now there's a lot of obligations on corporate groups to report. So we've been able to tap into that and they've been really.

They'Ve been really keen to actually use it to.

Make a difference in our freight emissions. So we've started using Kiwirail a lot Ralph Freight and yeah, so this. Sometimes you can feel like you've turned over every stone.

But most of the time you haven't. You just gotta keep twisting them and keep looking and keep looking for new solutions. And I think that's where you end up. You know, it becomes really, it becomes like slightly obsessive where you just go, anything, any problem or thing you take, there'll be a better way to do it. Yeah, and I get that that's time consuming and maybe that puts people off, you know, I know what it's like to have a small business and feel like you've never, ever, ever, ever finish your list of things to do.

But probably what we've taken out of this process is that a lot of it is about efficiency and I think we certainly have a better business because of B Corp. So it's not really a question of profit or purpose.

Nice.

Yeah. And I do try and make that point to people who maybe you don't have to have some sort of altruistic.

Motivation. It's actually just really good business to operate this way. And I think, if anything, if we can be living proof of that, you can be a good business and.

Successful business, then that's probably. That's probably going to be that probably right now is.

What we're most, most useful to the world in doing.

Yeah, brilliant. Yeah. For the last couple of years, I've literally been using in some presentations, B Corp is better business as the title.

Yeah, yeah.

Because, you know, clearly I think there's a couple of things to unpack there, I think. Yeah. Having the conversation with supply chain, if you're, if you're in wholesale retail manufacturing, typically what we find is most companies we're helping on their B Corp journey is they're like, yes, we buy all our stuff from a guy called Dave in Auckland. He's a really nice guy. He takes us for dinner once a year. But I don't know where Dave's getting all our stuff from. So I think the fact that you've even, you've started to interrogate your supply chain, you know, you're ahead of most companies who don't even, you know.

Yeah.

It's just not on their radar yet.

Yeah. And you don't, I mean, because a lot of them are big, you know, the companies that supply our glass and cans, for example, they're huge. They're multinationals. There is no local company producing bottles anymore.

Yep.

But it's still valuable to ask the question. You know, you just hope that if we all ask, then that's the thing, they'll start to be more transparent.

I sort of say that when people go, yeah, but you know, our two biggest companies in our supply chain are Google and Microsoft.

Yeah.

Send an email.

Yeah.

You know, eventually the person who's monitoring info, google.com or whatever it is.

Yeah.

It's going to go, hey, actually.

And I'm getting a lot of questions.

Yeah, I'm getting a lot of questions. So you just don't know.

Yeah.

What impacts sending that email that. Yeah. Might go Nowhere, but you just don't know.

And I think the other thing when you talk about better business is you don't even have to believe that your customers will be more inclined to support you because of it. That, that's, to me, that's not necessarily the crucial part. It's better business because.

The back, the back end stuff, it's better business because it's more, much more efficient. You're much less wasteful from an environmental point of view at least. And it's better business because you attract good people to a business like this. And that's probably been. I know we were going to get to this, but the most surprising thing about B Corp is we've had so many people come to us wanting to join our team and, and especially in this time of, you know, quite, it's been quite difficult recruitment, wanting to join our team because B Corp tells them the kind of business we are.

And so, you know, whether your customers care about B Corp or not, those things in themselves are worth.

Yeah.

Yeah. And, and we're hearing that, you know, it's anecdotal evidence, but we're hearing it from multiple sources. So at some point we probably just need to collect this from the New Zealand perspective and go. Yeah, because we hear that story all the time for people. Yeah, yeah, yeah. People are reaching out to me. They want to work for me because I'm a big.

Yeah.

And again, obviously, you know, if you're producing less waste than the average household compared to other brewers or any other manufacturing, but there's a massive cost saving there for you, you know, and if you are even possibly hooking into sort of circularity and then selling a waste product for a profit.

Yeah.

It's like, and this is where I think, you know, another phrase I like using is, you know, doing good makes sense. And it makes sense.

Yeah, yeah.

Have you cake and eat it. It's not. Yeah, I think there's still. Well, I keep always coming back to. We're currently sitting at 0.01% of the global for profit business community is a B Corp. So we're not even touching the sides yet in terms of the potential for this movement and so on that you kind of go, what's that? 99.99% of businesses are still just looking at their business in a purely for profit lens. I mean, sure, there's going to be some in the middle ground who are, yes, we, we, we are purpose driven but we don't want to do a B Corp or we're using some other Framework, but let's say that's even 10% of the global business community.

Yeah.

That still means that maybe 90 odd percent of the business community are waking up every day just looking at the balance sheet, looking at the profit and loss and going are we up or down? And this is what the message we're really trying to push is. You can have your cake and eat it, you can get possibly a better business financially by doing good, but then ultimately you'll go on this, you know, journey of discovery around purpose and contribution and do good and suddenly you'll realize that actually chasing the money wasn't that important or valuable in the beginning. So.

Yeah, and you can reconcile those things, you know, like they do. They're not as.

Polar opposite as they first appear. Purpose and profit, totally.

The way I like to sort of describe it is, you know, for the people, for change to happen in the world, we need the people, the good people to have the money to go and make the change. And so, you know, it's that whole kind of not for profit versus for profit. So typical mindset. You know, I spent 12 months on a contract working for Kilmartic Enterprise, it's a really cool charity here, based in Christchurch. And Michelle Sharp, their CEO, said no, we need to stop using the word not for profit. We're not for loss. You know, we make money and we do good with it, but we're not, we know we're not leaking money. We're not, we're not a charity, we don't have a charity mindset. We're looking for business exchange where we can get good money because we will do good with that money.

Yeah.

Rather than, oh please sir, can you, can I just have a dollar so that I can, you know, go and do some good? Yeah.

So yeah, I think this is really interesting actually. The money go round. There's lots of different small ways we can rethink about that kind of thing. You know, like for us, we used to give our grain to local farmers. Now we sell it to them for a nominal amount. It's much cheaper than buying any other kind of animal feed. But that gives us an amount of money, a few thousand dollars every year that is then allocated to local organizations. So we have to just think carefully about how the money goes around, I think, and make sure that we're siphoning, siphoning it off in the appropriate places and redistributing it.

Yeah. Because it's unlikely that most people in the true business for good, purpose driven world are going to take all that money and buy 10 Maseratis with it. Typically. Yeah, it's going to be either we'll reinvest it in the business to, to make an efficiency or do some more or hey, now we've, you know, now we have excess, now we can start giving more to people that need it. That's, you know, nine times out of 10 that's going to happen.

Yeah. Or it opens up new opportunity to do, to do even more good. Invest in your tech or invest in your people or.

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah.

The self sourcing chocolate cake of goodness. Just like. Yes, more goodness, more goodness. Away we go.

But, but you don't have to be, like we said, you know, you don't have to be necessarily altruistic or have that underlying belief for this to work.

100. Yeah. And I think, you know, that's why again with like the N word, it's like Nespresso are now in the global community. They are going to have pressure put on them now. People there'll be, you know, they've probably got, I don't know how many thousands of employees they've got globally. All those employees are now on a journey of discovery around impact and purpose. You know, they, they've probably got a team of hundreds of people now looking at their supply chain going okay, how do we get to be producing less than 10kgs of waste, you know, per manufacturing plant? Like if they, if they like if. But I think this is where the small to medium businesses of the world will be. The know you're going to be the ideation houses for these bigger companies because, because of the altruism that you have, you've done all that hard work to show that it can be done. And in some ways, you know, maybe that's a revenue, you know, stream for, for companies like yours is like, hey Nespresso, like we've cracked a lot of this. We, we're happy to come, yeah, we're happy to come and consult you for, you know, half a million dollars to show you how to come and do it. And yeah, we'll put that money to really good use with our community.

Yeah, that's right.

But again there's quite a few people who have this like no, they are big evil bastards, like, don't want to work with them. I had a zoom with a lady last week and she's like, I'd be really interested. She does purpose work similar to myself and she was saying I've just been offered a contract at a really big global company and you know, to deliver some Work on purpose and meaning. And some of my friends and colleagues are saying, oh, you're a sellout. You're a shill for taking their money. And I'm like, no, take their money because you need money to survive. And the influence that you will have with the depth of knowledge you have around purpose. Like, if you change 10 people in that company to be thinking more altruistically, isn't that better than that not happening?

Yeah, I 10. I believe in this. I think we've just got to keep having conversations. There isn't really room to cut people out now, and we're in a hurry. We've got lots to do in a short time and we need to keep conversations going. I think it's been probably, in a way, a lot easier for us here because.

This is being driven by Mike and I and our team. You know, now there's a lot of people in our team that are driving this, but we haven't had to talk anyone into it.

Yeah.

You know, so we've really been able to lean into this and it changes how people think all the time about all the decisions, like who can we support, you know, who are we going to get to, who supplies our tea in our restaurant, who.

All of these things, these tiny decisions.

Yeah. Having that lens across the company, to.

Be able to cross the lens, and it becomes a culture. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

It sounds like you're, you know.

Well, I mean, we're not. This is it. So this. That's a very interesting point because I've been thinking a lot about. We're trying to put together a sustainability report because we've B Corp Certified, but it would be great to offer a bit more transparency to people who want to know what else we're doing. And I read quite a few, and I feel like some of them are a bit of a marketing puff piece.

Yep.

And I feel that that's not really helpful to anybody. It's not really helpful to other businesses. What we need is more of a transparency culture. We need to be able to say what we're failing in, what we're finding really difficult because other businesses are not going to put their hand up and point that out if people who are doing some good are not going to do that too. So I think we have an obligation to talk about what's hard. And lots of things are hard. I mean, we use a lot of CO2, we use a lot of LPG, we use a lot of freight. Every single bottle and can and cardboard box that leaves here is used one Time, you know, there's a lot of things that keep me awake at night, that's for sure.

Yeah.

So, yeah, we're doing, we're doing well sometimes we're doing our best.

But we've also got to be able to say what's hard.

Yeah, totally.

Yeah.

And I think, I think you've nailed it. Yeah. I see two, two extremes of the impact reporting. There's the fluffy. Here's some. Yeah, here's a couple of pictures. Aren't we amazing? But there's no evidence to back it up. There's, you know, claims, but then on the other end you get these 100 page PDF reports that no one reads because it's like, it's quite boring and not that inspiring. And I agree. I think, you know, we see this, I guess like greenwashing on the one side, but on the other side is the green hushing where people either don't want to talk about the good that they're doing because it's not perfect. And so, you know, they know that the comments on socials or you know, if they get an article in the press going to be, yes, but what about. And it's like we get that. And so I agree that the advice we give to all our clients is just be honest, be transparent. And like I said, we had an example, Perry Drysdale on one of our previous episodes. So if you haven't checked that one out, go check it out. Because that was another banger. You know, they transition from plastic packaging. So they, they sell clothing and so people order online, you know, they send out the jumper or whatever it is. So they had plastic courier bags. They switched to biodegradable compostable ones. Turned out they weren't that biodegradable. Weren't that compostable. They weren't actually as fit for purpose. They were causing more harm than the plastic ones. So they switched back and then had a bunch of customers complaining. And then they had to educate them and say, look, we haven't just done this, you know, this isn't a cost based decision. This is actually we've looked at the, the impact of the data and the evidence and we've, we've made a decision. And I think most people who are environmentally conscious and aware as a consumer are willing to have the conversation around the nuance of doing good. Yeah, more so than perhaps we give them credit for. So to just ignore it and not have the conversation. And I think people are missing out on so much opportunity to have those big and brave conversations and say, look, if you've got a solution, let us know because we want, we want to solve it and we can't do it alone. And so I think there's massive opportunity that people don't tap into.

Totally. And we've actually had that experience when we, you know, I spent a long time looking for somewhere to recycle our grain sets. Obviously I didn't look very efficiently. But in the end we reached out to our community and a local woman put us onto plastic. So I think if you, I think good things come from being transparent and it's going to bring more people along because otherwise there's going to be this gap, you know, that people feel they can't, can't get over because they don't have all the claims to make or. Yeah. So we need, we need to close that gap by being more honest, I think. About what, what's hard.

Yep. And we can't. You can't do this by yourselves, you know, you need other people because you can, you know, it's your own business. You know, you can't see wood for the trees. You. This is just how it's always been done.

Yeah.

And then similarly, you know, you know, we hear some people who do have the conversations with their supply chain and it's like, okay, why does it have to come like that? Well, because it always has done. Okay, well could you go and have a look? You know, so you sometimes need that external input and other people who are in, you know, in other industries to go, hey, did you know that this is a thing over here? No, I had no idea because I'm.

Not involved in that industry collective action as well. You know, we need to be collectively asking for these changes.

Yeah, totally.

Yeah.

So much, so much to get done. But, you know, yeah, we're all, we're all doing it in our own little ways.

Yeah, yeah.

So what, what does being a, being a B corp mean to you now? You know, a two time B corp. Yeah.

So we recertified last year, beginning of last year I think that was. We didn't get as much done. We did score really well, much higher the second time. But I still felt like we didn't really get a lot done in that three years. We had Covid. We had all the lockdowns, we had a big fire here. We were closed for nearly a year, manufacturing off site. So there were all kinds of things that made it complicated. So I'm hoping that this time around we can do a few things. Like I mentioned earlier, that mostly the first certifications sat with me was really inspired by Hamish Reed at Sinle who I think drove their B Corp certificate certification and he talked about having they talk about beehives at Sinle. So that was how they got their team.

Engaged on it. And so we, we tried to do that with our second certification and then with all the lockdowns, people working from home, it was really difficult and that kind of thing just got constantly bumped. So we'll definitely do that again.

Disappointed? You guys weren't considered an essential provider. I mean, surely we were. You were, but you still had to have office stuff.

Well, it was more for people's. Well, right, right, well being. I guess most people worked from home and we had so many lockdowns in Auckland as well.

Yeah, you forget you guys did it.

Way harder and the kids were at home. So anyone with kids was, you know, working from home. So it was really about the essential work and not so much this, the rest of it, but conceptually it was awesome because we asked the team, you know, who would like to work on a governance project for the next certification, who wants to work on our customers experiences, who wants to work in the environmental space and people put their hands up for all of them. And so suddenly you've got a significant proportion of the business who are wanting to be involved. They're going to get, they're going to, firstly, they're going to bring all their, their interesting way of seeing things that, you know, not just limited to a couple of us to solving problems, they're going to understand B Corp a lot better and they're going to be way more engaged in the process of certifying. So there's nothing but good to come out of that. And you know, I learned that the hard way, I guess.

Yeah, we're really dogmatic. Everyone that we work with, we make them bring the team on the journey. Yeah, yeah, everyone on what B Corp is. And then we go, right, you need a project team. And when we make that offer at the end of that kickoff session, they're normally struggling to say to people, no, sorry, we're full. Like the governance, like we've. You can't, you know, in a bigger company, we can't have everyone. I mean we have had some clients shout out to Genora. They literally had the whole company go through B Corp with us and they got so much out of it because, you know, hey, well why do we do it that way? Well, I don't know, that's just how I found it. You know, Monique would go, yeah, totally. Well, hey, I've been thinking, could we do it this way? Yeah, that's.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

You know, so it just gave that platform lens and environment of.

And that's so good for your business. When you have that culture of problem solving like that and always turning things around and looking at them in a different way, it really, it just has a positive spin right through. Yeah, it's a very, it's a great thing. So we'll definitely, definitely do that.

I think that, you know, we've generally focused a lot on our environmental impact and we'll continue to do that because we're a manufacturer and that's where we see certainly, like our emissions. You know, that's a big focus for us. We do have significant emissions as a manufacturer, but we're going to take the same approach to that. So I started to think that I'd spoken to quite a few people who offer services where they'll measure your emissions and certify you and just felt like a lot of the thinking was sitting with experts outside the business. And I felt like there was going to be real value and a layman's understanding in the business of what emissions are. I mean, not all of us have got a great science brain, you know, myself included. So took quite a bit of learning for me to get my head around how it all worked. And I, I feel like there's so much value in a real baseline understanding in the business of where our emissions come from, how we calculate them, and then critically where then people can start to see where you could make improvements. And so we're going to be training.

Training some of our team to measure our missions in house. Whether we go on and certify is really a resource question. You know, there's a cost to certifying and at this stage we'll take that money and put it into a, into a reduction exercise rather than a certification one at this stage.

But yeah, I think the more that you can skill your team up on these things, the more useful that is to them in their lives as well. You know, we have to understand how missions look as individuals and we leave it all set with experts. I just don't know that we're going to get on board in the same way.

Yeah.

Can I go off topic?

No, no, 100%. No, you're all good.

Yeah, no, I think, yeah, the more, I mean, yes, there's sometimes that you do need, you do need expert input and that's cool. But yeah, the more you own this stuff internally.

Yes, 100%.

Again, what we keep saying to people who are kind of like, we're sort of be curious.

Yeah.

Not quite sure. It's like the closing the purpose loop, like the engagement. The. Because, you know, in our kickoff session, and I kind of use a similar session for a keynote that I give, like, I asked people like, what are the big things that you're. That you are worried about or passionate about socially and environmentally? And there'll be inequality, there'll be, you know, pollution. There'll be like whatever topic that, you know, people care about. You go, well, this is the thing. Like, you care about that, but you are also a customer, you are also an employee, you are also an investor. You are also in someone's supply chain and there's now millions of other people around the world who also care about that. So activating that internal piece where there's going to be people in your company who really care about your environmental impact, but they might be in finance or they might be in marketing or whatever, and it's not actually, you know, linear as to how they can play a role in that, but let them bring that thing that they're really passionate about to help you as a company solve the meta problems of your company or your industry. Oh, look at that. Oh, the staff are super engaged and really excited to come to work. What a crazy idea. You know, it might totally.

And that's the benefit of being a business our size is because it's really obvious to us that being very cellular about who's responsible for what is not productive and that good ideas come from everywhere, all the time and that we live that so we know that that's how, how it works for us.

Yeah. No. Massive, massive, massive, massive missed opportunities all over the show from, from people in this area. Yeah. Which is, which is why we're so. Yeah. So hot in it. So have you made like, clearly you're doing a lot of good stuff. What's been the, the biggest mistake you've made in trying to do some good? Has there been any, like, red herrings or dead end stre down and gone? Oh, probably should have done that. You know, in retrospect, that wasn't, that wasn't the thing.

I think.

No, I don't think we've made any big mistakes. No, I think. No, I don't think so. There's nothing that we've tried that's been a disaster, really. Probably we haven't tried enough.

You know.

But you're not pushing hard enough. Come on.

Yeah, well, totally.

I mean, look, I think it's fair to say you're pushing. I mean you are still.

Yeah.

Still the only B Corp brewery in New Zealand. So, you know. Yeah, clearly pushing.

Well, maybe that's pretty hard. Haven't done enough is. We haven't probably tried to work with our industry enough, you know, and share this. It's on my list of things to try and do this year is to engage the, the brewing community a little bit more and find a platform and a way through the Brewers Guild that we can share information. Because I really understand, you know, most craft breweries are so similar to us. They're small, there's not that many people working in them and they're flat out and they're dealing with, particularly at the moment, you know, huge increase in costs and it's really difficult, difficult to be an independent brewery at the moment. And a lot of them, a lot of us are finding it hard and so this is not a priority for them. But if you can say to people, you can just give them some answers, go. That you can recycle this here or this, this carbon recapture system, for instance that we got. This is the ROI on it.

So you can give. Make shortcut it for them, you know.

Yeah. You've done all the hard work. You've been on the bleeding edge. Totally.

This don't buy this. This didn't work.

Yeah, yeah.

So I think if you can. And that's really about setting aside some competitive.

Our competitive nature really, and reminding ourselves of the bigger picture. Yeah, yeah. And that's harder said than done, to be honest. I mean, 100 we say this and then when it comes down to it, you know, most of us want to win or whatever, whatever that looks like.

It's a really hard one because. Yeah. I mean true purpose is your competition is not your competition. Your competition is the meta problem that we're trying to solve.

Yeah.

But it's. It's hard because you've got bills to pay, you've got your mortgage to pay, you've got.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's a parent victory. You know, if we're the only people in New Zealand in 10 years, like where are we all at then if that's the case? So I think that's probably what we have not done enough of and there's a lot of opportunity there. It's just, you know, just gotta sometimes get your together and get. Start doing these things.

Well, like I said, you know, bump them up. Don't be hard on yourself.

Yeah, yeah.

You've got. I think most people who are in the business for Good world. You're all doing so much mainly small businesses like you've been through Covid a fire that's destroyed like you know, a lot of companies that would put them out of business, you know. So the fact that you're even still maintaining the highest standard of ethics, transparency and impact as a business when it would have been possibly easy to go actually do you know what? Research, it's just too hard. We're going to drop it. Like we're just going back to basics. We're just gonna, you know, we've got to focus on getting the money back in the door, you know, actually hey, we're going to get rid of. But I think as you've alluded to actually a lot of these business for good and impactful ideas actually are now core of your business because they make commercial sense as well as having an impact. So I think great example of where you've embedded it in the business because it makes sense and so you didn't throw it out, which is quite telling.

Yeah, yeah. I think we really got our heads around that quite quickly that we were okay with aiming to be a successful business that was purpose driven and that they were aligned to those goals.

Yeah, super cool.

Yeah.

Wrapping up then. So plans for the future. Any exciting things coming down the line?

Really exciting. So we've got some exciting projects in terms of a.

Biogas recapture system which we hope could have really exciting ramifications for rural manufacturers, maybe the wine industry particularly. So we're working on a big project that's a big environmental project at the moment which we're really excited about I think. I recently spoke with a guy, Mark Lawrence. His business is called 10 Past Tomorrow and he's an AI.

Expert who is works particularly. You need to meet him actually Tim. He works with human centered businesses. So he is interested in what how AI is going to help us. You know he's fully across how all the risks, you know all the scary things that keep you up at night about AI. But we've been talking to him about all the opportunity that it can present as well and I think that right now I'm really excited about what it could mean. Got no control over.

How much of you know how big it gets. It's coming.

There's no point thinking about whether we do or don't want it. But how are we going to harness it and how particularly are businesses like B corpse purpose driven, human centered businesses? How are we going to use it and what is it going to mean? Because if we get in early on this we've got the opportunity to.

I guess spread a bit of a narrative about it.

Like for example, if you can get your through the volume of work that you have in half the time, what amazing stuff can you do with the other, with that leftover time? You know, it doesn't necessarily mean you're going to be cut down to a part time position or two. People are going to be one and someone's going to lose their job. It doesn't have to look like that. And businesses, B Corps have a really, they're in a great position to think about this and direct the conversation in a way that's, that has positive outcomes. So I think that's what's on my mind at the moment. And I don't really know anything about AI, you know, like my understanding could not be that's minimal AI. But isn't it exciting that, well, you know, like it's pretty easy to go, oh, we're a manufacturer, won't have anything to do with us. Yeah, but it will, it will. And so it's been really cool to talk to Mark and kind of makes me feel like excited. I think that's become our culture in the last few years of B Corp is what can we do with this? That's right.

Nice, exciting times ahead.

Yeah, I think so. Yeah.

And then last couple of real quick questions. Who's your, who's your favorite B Corp? Have you if you haven't? Tricky.

Maybe Chia sisters.

Chia sisters. Nice. Yeah, they do some really cool stuff. So yeah, shout out to Florence and Chloe, the Van Dykes and who should be a B corp that isn't a.

B corp. Oh, Kiwi Rail.

Yeah, I think, yeah. You know, I think they've got a big opportunity to.

Big businesses with big impacts, big footprints, they need to be B Corps. We need to have freight providers that are B Corp. We need, we need to be automate identifying who's doing best in those big, you know, big emission areas. Yeah, yeah.

And they're a critical part of, you know, because they are shipping around all the stuff that all the amazing small medium B Corps are. So there's, there's immediate potential wins around, you know, your, your impact by having a better supply chain partner who's delivering your goods.

So and like we talked about before, you know, big, big businesses have the opportunity to make big changes. So someone big like that, why not?

Why not?

Yeah.

So what we can do. Cool, Cool. Hey, well Kirsty, thank you so much. Giving up some time. Come and talk, you know, big fan of what you do. I won't. I won't have a lunchtime beer. I will save it for tonight. Have a. Have a cheeky sawmill tonight to celebrate you coming on the podcast. But no, keep up the amazing work you're doing.

Thank you.

Yeah, just another great little.

And you, too, Tim. You're doing amazing work supporting people that go down this path, because it's a quiet nightmare to do it on your own. I know that firsthand.

That might.

Awesome. Thank you.

Cool. All right, we'll see you soon.

Okay. Cheers.

See ya.

Bye.