By James Atkinson
Arvo Lager will surely benefit from the expanded distribution that Coca-Cola Amatil can provide, according to Casella Wines managing director John Casella, who also spoke about the Australian Beer Company (ABC) joint venture’s other products.
Casella told TheShout that Arvo has already been a success, achieving double digit growth over the last six to eight months.
“November was our biggest month so there’s no need to change anything. It’s about getting it into the marketplace and getting people to try it,” he said.
“We’ve got a sales force of 20 or 30, CCA have got a sales force of 300 or 400. You can imagine the change in magnitude that will happen just from sales force weight alone,” Casella said.
“With any new product there’s obviously learning. We were new to beer, it was a brand new product, it’s been accepted I think satisfactorily.”
Of the other products to sit within the Australian Beer Company portfolio, Casella said Pressman’s Cider was developed in response to strong consumer appetites for premium Australian cider.
“Given that the brewery’s coupled with a winery and we’ve got expertise in fermenting fruit juice it was a natural trend that we moved towards having a premium cider in the range that ABC offers,” he said.
Casella said the Griffith brewery is quite flexible to in its ability to do large and small volumes for the ABC brands.
“When you’ve got a product like Alehouse there’s no reason why you can’t do seasonal offerings or you could do limited editions around some sort of sporting event,” he said.