FEBRUARY 2017 • COUNTRY LIFE IN BC Changes on tap for Sunshine Coast brewer
ALC says three-year-old brewery doesn’t meet regulations by PETER MITHAM
the ALC rejected the application.
GIBSONS – A three-year-old brewery on the Sunshine Coast is challenging provincial regulations that ban breweries from the Agricultural Land Reserve (ALR) unless they produce half their own ingredients.
Persephone Brewing Co. Inc. has operated on an 11.4- acre parcel in Gibsons since 2013. It harvests hops from a one-acre hopyard that it’s working to expand, but all other ingredients come from other producers – a fact that doesn’t mesh with provincial regulations.
While wineries and cideries have the freedom to blend their own produce with that of contracted growers to meet the province’s requirement that they use half their own produce, brewers must grow the full 50% themselves. Hops don’t count because, according to the province, they’re a minor contributor to beer.
Brian Smith, who launched the brewery with Vancouver entrepreneur Mark Brand, thinks that’s wrong.
“Frankly, if all I did was grow hops on that farm and not process it, I couldn’t even afford to pay our mortgage let alone have a viable or profitable business model,” he said. “Beer has a profit margin in it that absorbs the cost of building out the agriculture.” Persephone developed a farm plan in March 2016 that outlined its vision to continue operating an on-farm brewery despite it contravening Agricultural Land Commission regulations. It cites Crannóg Ales in Sorrento, another microbrewery located within the ALR, as its model. “Persephone Brewing Company is striving to meet the … [regulations] for cideries and wineries to satisfy the ALC’s requirements,” the plan states. “We feel that these are reasonable requirements within the ALR that allow for both viable business growth married with the intent of the ALR.”
The report garnered the support of the Sunshine Coast Regional District, which supported Persephone’s application to the ALC last August intended to secure permission to continue its operations in contravention of ALC regulations.
South Coast panelists for
“The panel considered the proposal to operate a brewery on the property which sources all of the barley used for the beer from other locations. The panel finds that the brewery as currently operated is a non- farm processing facility and therefore could be located outside of the ALR,” the ALC said in its decision, issued in December.
Smith’s plan to expand the brewery’s operations off-site clinched the panel’s decision. “Persephone Brewing is in the process of expanding its operations onto industrially zoned land. For this reason, the panel supports the relocation of the brewery as currently operated to more appropriately zoned land outside of the ALR.”
Recognizing the success of the business and the significant capital investment made in the operation, the ALC granted Persephone two years to relocate or meet the province’s requirements. Smith believes this indicates ALC support for his vision. “They were purposeful about making it a long window, or a wide window – two years – I think they did that on purpose, because they looked at the existing regulations for breweries and said, ‘That doesn’t work,’” Smith said.
Such a stance is unlikely, says land commission CEO Kim Grout.
“Anybody who wants to process, whether you’re processing to produce wine, processing to produce cheese, processing to pack pears, everybody, depending on what commodity you’re producing, has different rules around processing,” she told
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An acre of hops doesn't qualify Persephone Brewing to operate in the ALR. PHOTO SUPPLIED
Country Life in BC. “It’s not really our job to advocate for one more than the others. I must assume some of the regulation development was intentional on the part of the government.”
How the brewery managed to locate in the ALR in the first place seems to be a result of confusion over the government’s intention, however. The local district seems to have had no issue with the project; indeed, Dion Whyte, its former general manager of sustainable services, left to be Persephone’s general manager.
“The communication that I had with the regional district, our local government, was that they could imagine – and likewise ALC planners – they could imagine us fitting in,” Smith said.
Moreover, the operation received licenses for both brewing and, more recently, a small cider-making operation that uses apples from Roberts Creek until its own orchard of
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“Everything that we do on our farm is permissible through the cidery regulations, but not the brewery regulations. So that inconsistency I have to assume was not intended,” Smith said.
“It don’t pay to be in farming. “We are committed to the model and figuring out how local farming can work for our communities, so that’s why we’re really adamant about getting some of these regulations changed.”
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