As the relentless downpour wreaked havoc across Southeast Queensland, XXXX Brewery was once again submerged in flood waters, a situation that it also faced back in 2011.
The Milton-based brewery said that The Alehouse and Tours have been closed as a result of the deluge and will remain shut until damages have been completely assessed.
The XXXX Brewery is under water at the back. @9NewsQueensland pic.twitter.com/j2UZq0Xhx3
— Pippa Bradshaw (@pippabradshaw) February 27, 2022
“All booked tours for the weekend have been cancelled and refunded. We will announce when we reopen through our social media as soon as we can.”
Reacting quickly during the 2011 Brisbane floods
XXXX Brewery suffered damage when it was inundated by 2.5m of water during the peak of Brisbane floods in 2011 with parts of its brewing room and office remaining underwater for about three days. The cost of the damage to the Castlemaine Perkins building amounted to $12 million.
Image number: 28182-0001-0015
Photo Credit: State Library of Queensland / slq.qld.gov.au/
Led by Paul Woods, who was the Operations Director at the time, the team made preemptive actions to ensure that equipment critical to the plant’s operation would be put right back up again as soon as possible. And in just about three days, everything was back online.
A bad case of Deja Vu
“It’s hard to believe that it’s happening again already, isn’t it?” Paul Woods told The Rush Hour about the latest flooding, “it’s only like yesterday for myself and the team.”
He said that there’s 1.5 m in at the lower level of the site which is causing them a few problems at the moment. The good news, however, is that the brewery has quite a number of elevated sections, so they managed to put the beer and tanks out of the water. Mr Woods said that they only need to get the packaging side of the operation to be back online and everything would be “good to go.”
As far as quickly turning things around like what they did in 2011, he said that he is hopeful that they could once again do that considering that the flood water has already receded and a team has already been dispatched to assess the damage.
Mr Woods admits that supply would be tight in the coming days but thankfully, all their finished products are held in an offsite warehouse so there is ample supply with no foreseen impact in the immediate future.
Asked if XXX Brewery might come out with a Mud Army 2.0 commemorative ale, he replied, “How do you think that Mud Ale might taste?”
