WINE merchant and Wavenet chairman Mick Stroud is spearheading a $10 million initial public offering to develop a brewery on the site of his Jandakot bottling facility. The brewery will be called Big Island Brewing Ltd and will be the fourth WA beer company to list on the Australian Securities Exchange in the past two years. WA Business News understands that Big Island Brewing will operate in a similar fashion to Gage Roads Brewing Company, which focuses on wholesaling beer to retail outlets and pubs, rather than Empire Beer Company’s strategy of operating Colonial Brewing Co pubs that brew the Colonial label. It is understood shares will be priced at 40 cents each and the float can take oversubscriptions of up to $3 million. Big Island Brewing has purchased a brew house from Germany and aims to be producing beer by the middle of the year. It’s understood the brewery has capacity to produce nine million litres of beer in its first year and can increase that capacity to 14ML. Gage Roads has capacity to brew about 5ML.
WA Business News under-stands there are no plans to develop a restaurant at the site. - Julie-anne Sprague
