Staff News – HPA

Farm Update (Jun 2023)

Pixel3 — Wed, 21 Jun 2023 01:43:44 +0000

After completing another milestone harvest, it’s time for us to reflect on our challenges and achievements for the season, as well as identify a strategy and focus points for this coming year.

The new season kicks off the very next day after completing a harvest, and this began with a huge effort from the farm teams to get on top of housekeeping and post-harvest maintenance. To direct our focus to the areas where we can leverage the greatest return for our efforts, water and weeds were elected as this season’s areas for improvement.

Efficiency gains in weedicide programs, managing weed pressure to reduce impact on nutrients and water, are going to be at the forefront. Cover crop seeding in mid rows are underway and a total of 300 hectares are planned for this season.

Irrigation systems maintenance, and the necessary equipment upgrades to our infrastructure are being discussed and actioned.

Having utilized FieldIn throughout the VIC harvest, and now also from the start of a complete growing season, the insights and feedback from the system will assist us to improve our operations. FieldIn is now in the process of being rolled out in TAS, and workshop module is also now being adopted to assist maintenance teams with admin and planning.

Featured TAS Brewery (Sep 2022)

Pixel3 — Sun, 02 Oct 2022 22:17:26 +0000

Who: Overland Brewers & Distillers

Where: 284 Argyle Street, North Hobart

When: Thu/Fri 2-10pm, Sat 12-10pm, Sun 12-8pm

The idea for Overland Brewers & Distillers was born one night on Bruny Island after three mates shared several boilermakers. Co-founder and Brewer Nathan Reeves began his career as a winemaker in the Yarra Valley, but the need to feed his creative fire ultimately led Nathan to brewing and distilling.

Since securing the lease on their North Hobart venue 3 years ago, Nathan got busy developing beer and whisky recipes on an old half-barrel pilot brew system and a beer keg still, until their grand opening in June 2022.

All the beers Nathan has brewed so far have had a high percentage of our Aussie hops in them, including a lager that features Ella, a hazy mid that features Eclipse^® and Ella, and an IPA that features Eclipse^®, Enigma and Galaxy^®.

Nathan is a big believer in buying local, and says “the quality, flavour and aroma of Aussie hops are awesome”. His absolute favourite is Eclipse, which he describes as “really bright and expressive, super versatile, and works great in any style of hop-forward beer…including stouts.”

Their taproom seats up to 100 people, serving beer directly from 6 bright tanks behind the bar every Thursday to Sunday. Plus, you can either help yourself to some free popcorn or venture our into their DIY, dog-friendly beer garden and grab something from their rotating roster of food trucks.

People & Culture Update (July 2025)

jAmieaDMin27 — Tue, 17 Jun 2025 05:21:10 +0000

Welcomes and goodbyes

Since the last Wire newsletter in January, we’ve been busy recruiting some new roles and warmly welcome and congratulate the following HPA employees:

Lance Dale has been appointed as Irrigation Controller (VIC)
Grace Irwin was promoted to Chief Marketing Officer
Marcus McRae was appointed as Farm Hand (VIC) and has recently been working as a Processing Facility Shift Supervisor at Hop Central.
Lindsy Greig has been appointed as the New Zealand Sales Rep
Hamish Jolly has been appointed as Corporate Accountant

We bid farewell to Tim Lord on his well-earned retirement in April. Owen Johnston officially took over as CEO on 3 May 2025.

We have finalised the appointment for two leadership team positions. We are pleased to announce that Patrick Taskunas will join us as Chief Financial Officer, and Mick Bentley will join us as General Manager Sales, in the coming months ahead.

Sadly, we say goodbye to Ben Malcolm, Jerry Zhu and Corey Docking, who finished up with us in recent weeks. We wish them well for their future endeavours and thank them for their hard work and contributions to the business.

Next All Staff Updates

The upcoming all-staff updates will be scheduled for late July – early August, following the July Board meeting. This timing is ideal to share insights about the current business performance, feedback from the Board, and a wrap-up of the pelleting season at Hop Central. Please watch for notifications regarding the on-site sessions, as this will be an important opportunity to learn more about the business and receive general updates.

We will also be awarding HPA Values Awards to some nominated individuals in recognition for championing our core values of Safety, Teamwork, Pride, Innovation, Respect and Integrity.

Harvest training & safety

Our safety performance for our 2025 harvest was successful. The recent harvest recorded no lost-time injuries, which is quite an achievement. It is the first harvest HPA has been LTI-free since these records were first captured, starting in 2014. The initiatives and focus areas that contributed to this were:

Comprehensive farm induction and orientation sessions for our casual harvest workers, with role-specific training with competency sign-off;
Diligent monitoring and upgrade of our PPE requirements;
Focus on clear daily pre-start meetings before each shift to remind workers of hazards, near misses or incidents that occurred on the previous shift;
Communication boards with daily updates in break-out areas and sheds;
Supervisor training sessions on delegating, communication, safety obligations, food safety and quality, and reporting requirements; and
Recording safety observations to identify small safety issues and items to remind workers.

A huge congratulations and thank you to everyone involved in making our harvest and pelleting season a safe one.

Featured TAS Brewery (Jun 2023)

Pixel3 — Wed, 21 Jun 2023 01:20:24 +0000

Who: Welcome Swallow Brewery

Where: 99 Rind Rd, New Norfolk

When: Fri 3-10pm, Sat 1-10pm, Sun 1-8pm

Welcome Swallow Brewery began in 2016 when a humble obsession for home brewing escalated into a commercial adventure. In 2019, co-owners Nige and Graham established the business in an old warehouse in Nige’s hometown of New Norfolk. The pair installed a small 800L brewhouse and converted the remaining space into an indoor beer garden, bringing their love of the outdoors inside for customers to enjoy year round.

Nige loves to experiment, creating a new beer with nearly every batch brewed. We recommend you make time to visit soon because they’re currently pouring the last of their 2023 fresh hop beer which is overflowing with Galaxy and Eclipse.

In what can best be described as an Amazonian rumpus room from the 1970’s, Welcome Swallow is a great place to get out of the cold and get stuck into some delicious beers, full of our Aussie hops. There’s plenty of seating and a rotating roster of food trucks serving local produce.

Featured VIC Brewery Update (Sep 2024)

Pixel3 — Mon, 30 Sep 2024 01:04:35 +0000

Who: Mountain Monk Brewers

Where: 1 Lakeside Ave, Mount Beauty

When:Thu 3-11pm, Fri 3pm-1am, Sat-Sun 12pm-12am

Nestled at the base of Victoria’s Mount Bogong lies the township of Mount Beauty. Back in 2017, brothers Steve and Mick, and cousin Matt, alongside their partners Bec, Steph and Lucy, reopened the local watering hole’s doors as West Peak Hotel.

However, they wanted to create something more to really put their beautiful town on the map. With a passion for craft beer and the relevant expertise, the family decided to install a 1,000 litre, three-vessel brewery on site in 2022. They utilise the region’s crystal-clear mountain water, quality hops and grain to make some seriously delicious beer.

With more than ten beer varieties on offer and award-winning food up for grabs, Mountain Monk Brewers have become a destination of their own. The business is family-owned and the only accredited wholly veteran-owned brewery in Australia.

We recommend trying their Aussie Hop Cold IPA. Its crammed full of Topaz and Eclipse^®, and absolutely pops with aromas and flavours of lychee, mandarin, citrus and tropical fruits.

Farm Update (July 2025)

jAmieaDMin27 — Tue, 17 Jun 2025 05:22:35 +0000

This harvest, we picked 566 hectares across Victoria and Tasmania, which resulted in 1,468 tonnes of hops. This was a 128 tonne (9.5%) increase despite a 104 hectare (15.5%) decrease year-on-year. We idled 32% of our gardens due to soft global demand in the current oversupply situation, with many brewers still working through a backlog of previous crop years. We used this production decrease as an opportunity to focus on soil remediation, cover cropping, cycling rootstock, and scaling up leading experimental hops in our breeding program. Impact in beer is expected to remain strong, with this year’s average oil content coming in slightly below or equal to the 5-year average for most proprietary hops. The star performer this year was Ella, with both oils and alphas above the 5-year average, which should deliver a real depth of flavour and complexity when paired with other new world hops. Eclipse®, Galaxy® and Vic Secret all experienced a slight decrease in alphas, and are expected to produce some well-balanced beers with true-to-type flavours and aromas.

Looking back on the last season, everyone pulled together to focus on delivering top-quality hops. From using new water sensors to adjusting our harvest timing, we made smart changes along the way. Yields were higher and while some fields took a break, teamwork stayed strong.

We had an early wet period, followed by a dry stretch, which gave us great conditions at harvest time, but also reminded us of how important water supply is. That’s exactly why we built a second dam in Victoria, to help us through future dry spells, and assist us with a strategic irrigation strategy that takes some of the pressure of our river system in times like these.

As winter settles in and the new growing season begins, our teams are busy planning budgets, updating fertiliser strategies, and getting ready for the months ahead.

This season, we’re continuing our push for more sustainable farming. That includes improving soil health, planting cover crops, and giving older blocks time to recover. With a quieter market this year, it’s the perfect time to invest in the land. Straight after harvest, our teams jumped into cleaning up gardens, facilities and making necessary repairs. We will keep our focus on the two big improvement areas: water use and weed control. Better weed management helps us save nutrients and water, and we will continue with the planting cover crops across all our production hectares.

We’re also upgrading our irrigation systems to a more automated and efficient setup, using new tech to improve how we work. Two of these, FieldIn and CropX, are helping us make better decisions and stay organized, even helping our maintenance teams plan more efficiently.

Management Update (Jun 2023)

Pixel3 — Wed, 21 Jun 2023 01:43:49 +0000

The biggest capital project at HPA right now is the construction of the new pelleting and packaging facility in Myrtleford. While we are yet to start work on site, engineering has been in full swing for almost 18 months. The design of the tower that will house the heart of the pelleting equipment is now complete. This was a complicated task, primarily due to the need to minimise noise from the 23-metre-high structure that is being built next door to land that is zoned for residential development. Major equipment components have also been sourced from the USA, Netherlands, Germany and China, with some already on site. We currently expect work on site to commence in August, with commissioning scheduled for early 2024.

As we approach the end of this financial year, budgeting is well underway for next financial year. Everyone is acutely aware of the current economic conditions that are challenging individuals and business’ alike, both in Australia and around the world. For HPA, this means significant increases in general operating and production costs. For the first time in approximately ten years, we are also seeing a significant reduction in demand for our Aussie hops, in combination with global oversupply. This surplus will be addressed through acreage adjustments for crop 2024 to ensure we don’t spend money growing hops we cannot sell. Our Victorian and Tasmanian farms will see some areas idled for 12 months (ie. the hops will remain in the ground but will not be strung or harvested). These areas will be chosen based on being consistently lower yielding, weed prone, and/or flood affected.

Featured TAS Brewery Update (Sep 2024)

Pixel3 — Mon, 30 Sep 2024 01:08:34 +0000

Who: Manky Sally’s

Where: 25 Salamanca Pl, Battery Point

When: Wed-Thu 4-10pm, Fri-Sat 12pm-12am, Sun 12pm-8pm

After 18 short years, the Moo Brew team decided it was time for a home (that wasn’t a big concrete box). They picked this Salamanca location with Head Brewer Jack Viney’s goals in mind – a place to accommodate a nano-brewery that allowed punters to try every experimental beer the team had come up with since the brewery was established. Manky Sally’s has a 350 litre capacity, as opposed to the 12,000 litre tanks at their main Moo Brew facility in Bridgewater.

Like anything Mona related, Manky Sally’s is a piece of art in itself. Apart from the beer, the highlight of the venue is the art installation by Spinks – 2,896 individually lit Moo Brew bottles arranged to create an alcove within the lounge space.

Their concise food menu has been specifically tailored to accompany Moo’s beers, keeping sustainability in mind, which means spent grain and surplus beer are used with wild game meats and Tasmanian grown veggies and seafood.

It’s hard to recommend a beer at Manky Sally’s as they change all the time, so just ask the friendly bar staff which beers feature Aussie hops. There’s sure to be at least one on tap at any time. In terms of Moo’s core-range beers, their Session Ale is an easy drinking summertime favourite packed full of Galaxy^®.

Management Update (July 2025)

jAmieaDMin27 — Tue, 17 Jun 2025 05:25:17 +0000

Plenty has happened since our last publication of The Wire in January. Significant events in our annual calendar have come and gone, including a very successful harvest and the operation of Hop Central’s pellet plant for processing crop 2025. We farewelled Tim Lord after the opening event at Hop Central and the April Board meeting in Myrtleford.

Hopefully everyone has read the HPA crop report published in May. If not, check it out on our website. Before yield or quality, it’s most important to note the incredible safety record for the harvest period. As safety is everyone’s responsibility, well done to you all on this fantastic result. Combine that with an uptick in overall yields and good quality at bale intake, we have delivered a great result from the 2025 harvest.

Hop Central operations started at the beginning of April, on crop 2025 material. It’s been a journey bringing this fantastic new site to life, and as each week passed, the team continued to improve throughput and quality outcomes. Already, crop 2025 pellets are reaching brewers here in Australia and I am looking forward to our customers feedback on what we have achieved.

Looking outside the business, market conditions continue to be challenging. Global beer volume has increased over the last two year, which reverses a long running trend of slow global volume decline. For HPA, the bulk of sales are into the higher hop usage segment of ‘craft’ breweries, which unfortunately are down more significantly than traditional brewers. While we continue to work with the BarthHaas group and our regional distributors to invigorate sales, crop ’26 will see a decline in sales volume destined for craft brewing purpose and a lift in hops grown for the alpha acid market. There is a significant difference in the financial returns selling into these two different market segments.

On a quality note, audit season has concluded successfully. Head Office and the farms have maintained a strong track record by passing their ISO 9001 and HACCP audits, reaffirming our commitment to quality management and food safety standards. A particularly exciting development from Hop Central is that we have completed both Stage 1 and Stage 2 of the FSSC 22000 audit. Following this rigorous process, we are now officially FSSC certified – a significant milestone that reflects the robustness of our systems and the dedication of our team to meeting internationally recognised standards. The processing team at Hop Central played a vital role in this achievement. They have diligently embraced our upgraded systems and consistently carried out checks and procedures. As part of our continuous improvement strategy, we are now collecting and analysing data from the harvesting and pelleting stages. This information will feed into our post-harvest review, enabling us to assess performance comprehensively and identify both strengths and areas for improvement.

On a sustainability note, the BarthHaas Group’s Science Based Target initiative (SBTi) was recently submitted and validated. By validating our climate targets, the Group demonstrates an understanding of our minimum decarbonisation requirements by which our customers and investors can measure us. To be validated, the Global Sustainability Group, including HPA’s George Webster, has completed a huge body of work, creating greenhouse gas inventories and calculating decarbonisation targets. Together HPA, HAAS and BarthHaas have committed to an emission reduction target of 63% by 2035. Following validation, the Global Sustainability Group will now prepare a draft emission reduction roadmap over the next year, which will be finalised and submitted in 2027.

Management Update (Sep 2022)

Pixel3 — Sun, 02 Oct 2022 22:21:53 +0000

New pelleting, packaging and storage facility

We’re excited to announce HPA have purchased the former Tobacco Cooperative of Victoria site in Myrtleford, Victoria, which we plan to transform into a state-of-the-art pellet plant, packaging line and cold storage by 2024.

The $20 million project will double our current processing capacity and allow us to process our increasing volume of hops in a timely fashion, ensuring we produce consistently high-quality pellets.

On top of centralising the pelleting and packaging of all hops from BPE, RHG and BRV, the site will become the administrative headquarters for our Victorian operation, including lab facilities and significant cold storage for bales and finished goods. It will also be utilised as a training hub to develop the skills of our workforce.

BPE remains integral to our farming operation, and head office will remain in Hobart, Tasmania.

Annual planning workshop outcomes

The HPA Leadership Team recently finalised the 2022/23 business priorities and strategy for the year ahead. This aligned with the finalisation of our budgeting process. Central to our priorities are improving our systems, processing, and the quality of our crops, and celebrating the year we’ve had. More information will be shared at the next staff update.

The HPA Leadership Team consists of:

Tim Lord – Managing Director
Chris Price – Chief Financial Officer
Owen Johnston – Head of Sales & Marketing
Hans Dreyer – General Manager of Operations
Kate Taylor – Head of People & Culture
Nic Danger – Chief Information Officer
Simon Whittock – Head of Agronomic Services