Way of the Copper Dragon brewery
By the time you read this, the first pints from Yorkshire brewery Copper Dragon's new £4m brewhouse will be wetting customers' lips. It is the latest chapter in the remarkable story of a brewery that is emblematic of the boom in British micro-brewing.
How has a team headed by Steve Taylor - at the time of establishing the business in 2002, a brewing virgin with a background working for Rolls-Royce - capitalised on the newfound appeal of cask ale with marketable regional provenance?
The brewery has followed a haphazard expansion plan since 2002, adding capacity as and when growing demand called for it to a site on an unimpressive industrial park in Skipton. The new facility has doubled Copper Dragon's capacity, allowing it to increase distribution on top of 1,500 pubs it was supplying.
The 11,000 sq ft brewery contains a four-vessel German-style brewhouse and 12 fermenting vessels. It seems step-by-step expansion is over - there is room to 'copy and paste' the fermenters and install an identical set alongside the current ones.
There are several reasons for the growth of this start-up brewery, whose beers include a Best Bitter, pale ale Challenger, and blonde ale Pippin.
It helped that Taylor had the capital to pump into the brewery and establish an estate of 10 pubs.
Secondly, he is obsessed with marketing, enthusing about Copper Dragon's posh, liveried delivery vans. It may seem an unlikely approach to bound up to this visiting journalist on arrival and ask him to choose between two prospective designs for the brewery's new signs, but this enthusiasm for the company's image seems to be paying off. Most importantly, Copper Dragon's marketing stresses the provenance which consumers are craving. "We want to remain a small regional brewery in northern England," Taylor adds.
Thirdly, he claims that coming from outside brewing has brought a helpful, fresh approach. "We have the same ethos that Rolls-Royce had of 'buy the best of everything and then think about price'," he claims.
However, growth has come at a price. In the early days, Copper Dragon relied heavily upon the Society of Independent Brewers' (SIBA) Direct Delivery Scheme for distribution to pubs, and also took advantage of the tax breaks small brewers get through Progressive Beer Duty (PBD).
As the brewery has enlarged, it has no longer been able to take advantage of these systems to the same extent. Taylor believes it is unjust that brewers appear to be penalised for growth, and illogical that businesses are effectively given incentives to remain small and relatively unsuccessful.
"As soon as our DDS deliveries got big enough, Enterprise said to us 'you're taking too much business away from our tied products. To be in our pubs, you have to supply us direct and take the prices we dictate','" says Taylor. "It's unfair, as is PBD. Once you pass a certain output threshold, it makes a £10,000-a-month difference in lost tax breaks. While I believe the system gives assistance to small brewers, it holds others back."
Despite these difficulties, this dragon looks set to breathe fire.
SIBA on Copper Dragon
"From day one, Copper Dragon has been a success story," says Nick Stafford, MD of SIBA's Direct Delivery Scheme. "For someone from outside of the brewing industry to make the commitment Steve Taylor has to brewing is very encouraging for the future of this British institution. Best of luck to Copper Dragon."
