Participate in the Brewers Association Sustainability Benchmarking Project

Link to article sustain main
Share Post

Increasingly, environmental stewardship is a priority for beer drinkers, brewers and future generations. Maintaining a healthy balance between stewardship, social enrichment, and economic vitality is important to the future of craft brewing. Brewers Association (BA) members have expressed a desire to benchmark key performance indicators on a consistent basis in order to set aggressive, but realistic, goals and targets. Your brewery’s participation in the benchmarking project will benefit you directly, and allow us to develop baseline information to the benefit of all brewers.

About the project

In 2013, the BA began working with Antea Group, a global sustainability consultancy, to create sustainability-related best practices guidance manuals and tools for brewers related to energy, water, wastewater, carbon dioxide and solid waste. Craft brewers use the documents and tools to improve their efficiencies and grow in a sustainable manner.

A pilot benchmarking study was conducted in 2014 using utility data from 25 craft breweries of various production sizes and configurations. The results of the pilot were presented at Craft Brewers Conference & BrewExpo America® in April 2014. The presentation emphasized the importance of representative benchmarking data in creating real and lasting business value.

The BA has engaged Antea Group to expand the pilot benchmarking study from 25 to 250 craft breweries in 2015. Antea Group will provide trusted third-party data collection and aggregation, user anonymity and consistent use and comparison of key performance indicators. The results of the benchmarking study will be published as a document and shared on the BA website by the end of 2015.

The project also involves creation of an online dashboard so participating members can input their own brewery data with ease, visualize their trends and compare them to their peers in real time and access the benchmarking database through numerous queries. This online access will allow members to set targets and input ongoing monthly utility and cost data for tracking of actuals against targets. Specific brewery names will not be identified in the study to protect disclosure of any sensitive business information.

What are the benefits of participation?

Craft breweries that participated in the 2014 pilot benchmarking and target setting exercise identified the potential for significant cost savings. These savings ranged from $35,000 to $235,000 annually for small to larger craft breweries. Members that participate in the 2015 benchmarking study will be assigned a username and password to allow for monthly online data entry from a desktop or mobile device.

Additional benefits of participation will include access to multiple queries allowing specific brewery comparisons against various production levels, geographic regions and operating configurations. Participants will also be allowed to enter target usage and cost values and track ongoing monthly performance against targets.

There is no cost to participate in the benchmarking project. Participants can participate in the goals/progress reward program and be rewarded for progress through a sustainability index under development by the BA sustainability subcommittee.

Breweries that choose to not participate will be able to download the benchmark data, but won’t be able to measure their performance over time, monetize their progress or be recognized and rewarded through the sustainability index.

How do I participate?

Interested breweries should contact BA sustainability mentor John Stier for more information.

  • Contact:
  • John Stier
  • BA Sustainability Mentor
  • sustainabilitymentor@brewersassociation.org
  • (314) 629-3711