Feature story on Coopers

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Feature story on Coopers

Postby Oliver » Wednesday Apr 25, 2012 10:11 am

An article from The Advertiser about Coopers and its 150th anniversary. It's a few weeks old now but I just came across it.

http://www.adelaidenow.com.au/ipad/home ... 6319953141

Home brood
By Michael McGuire, Reuters
April 07, 2012


GLENN Cooper has always enjoyed the roller coaster ride of being in the brewing business - even when it left him battered and bloodied. As an adventurous 12-year-old living near the family's brewery in the eastern suburb of Leabrook, Glenn would load himself into a wooden beer box and launch himself down the rollers that sped the beer from the dark cellars to the loading dock and the waiting delivery trucks.

Until one day it all went wrong.

"I was sitting in this box and all of a sudden, bang, crash, I fell on the ground, the box has broken open, my back is buggered," says Glenn. He groped around in the dark for a light and when he turned it on found that the workers had taken out a whole section of rollers. "So I have gone flying off the end, and the picture in my mind is me hanging onto this wooden Coopers' box, flying through the air, then smashing and breaking."

Glenn shared his childhood adventure playground with his younger cousin Tim Cooper. They lived in the same street, played in the brewery and grew up with its history. Now Glenn and Tim are the key figures in the modern story of the company started by their great-grandfather. Glenn is chairman and marketing director. Tim is the managing director and head brewer. They oversaw the relocation of Coopers from Leabrook to Regency Park in 2001 and the investment of $120 million to turn it into the very model of a modern major brewery.

Today it's easy to take the success of Coopers for granted. But there were times in the 1960s, '70s, '80s and even the 1990s when it seemed as if Coopers would slip beneath the foam. But this year, as it celebrates the 150th anniversary of when Yorkshireman Thomas Cooper brewed his first batch, it's one of the great local survival stories.

Coopers is now the largest remaining Australian-owned brewer after last year's takeover of Foster's Brewing by South African company SABMiller. Coopers has come through periods of poor sales, some terrible investments decisions that cost it millions, intense competition from its much-larger rivals and a divisive and bitter takeover battle to emerge in probably the strongest position in its history thanks to Glenn and Tim.

The cousins are an interesting study in contrasts. At 61, Glenn is older than Tim by six years and seems made for the beer world: relaxed, a bit of a larrikin and quick with a joke. You can see him holding court in the front bar of your local. Tim is a far more serious character who brings his scientific training as a doctor to the business. But when amused he unleashes a real bray of a laugh that makes you wonder if he's about to stop breathing.

Glenn celebrates the fact that they are totally different personalities. "Not badly different but we are different. He's brilliant and I'm not," says Glenn. "That's a good balance. If we were doing the same thing that would be a problem."

Glenn and Tim joined the business in 1990, having both developed careers elsewhere. The reason for this was simple enough - they were told as young men that there was a fair chance the brewery would not survive too much longer. Tim recalls a conversation with his father Bill about his future when he was still at school. Some part of his brain had assumed he would end up working in the brewery and when Bill asked him what he would do after school he replied he would study engineering then join the company. "And he said, 'oh no you can't do that, the brewery is in the doldrums'."

This was in the early 1970s. The Coopers had just spent a lot of money installing equipment to start making lager for the first time. The only problem was that they couldn't sell much of the brew called Gold Crown Lager, not because of the quality of the beer but because rival South Australian Brewing Co owned about 120 pubs around the state and they wouldn't put Coopers on tap.

So Glenn and Tim went their own way. Glenn set up a computer sales and service company, which he says was good practice for the beer world because "I learnt to fight in the gutter in the computer field". Tim gave up on the idea of mechanical engineering, became a doctor, and ended up working in the National Health Service in the United Kingdom.

But the brewery was never far from their minds. By the late 1980s, Tim's father Bill said, "you might want to consider at some stage coming back". Glenn was given the same message by his father, Ken. The Coopers were planning for the future. When Glenn and Tim rejoined they did so in junior positions and were expected to learn the business from the ground up.

These were still difficult times for Coopers. It had diversified into things such as a disastrous shareholding in radio network Austereo, which cost it about $40 million. It also owned companies which made products such as honey, biscuits and breakfast cereals. None of them made much money.

And then Coopers was hit by the 1991 recession. In the late 1980s beer production at Coopers had increased to about 18 million litres a year. By 1993 it was back to 11 million. "From our own accounting we considered that we didn't make any money on beer until we got it above 15 million litres," Tim says. "For the first half of the '90s ... every carton of beer we sold lost money."

At that time, as with other occasions when the company appeared to be on the precipice, Coopers struggled through because of the success of its home brew product. "It was the saviour of the company up until the mid-'90s," Tim says of the product that is exported to more than 20 countries and accounts for 30 per cent of the company's revenue and has just expanded again with the purchase of US home brew company Mr Beer.

But in 1993, Coopers caught a couple of breaks that were to fundamentally change the company. Perhaps most important was the sale of the South Australian Brewing Company to New Zealand's Lion Nathan. Its owner, Douglas Myers, did not see the 120 hotels as a core part of the business so sold them - about a quarter of the state's hotels at which punters couldn't get Coopers on tap. Being locked out of all those beer taps had made life extremely difficult for Coopers. "While the word restrictive wasn't used, it was very restrictive. You couldn't get in on tap at all," Glenn says now. "They decided to sell those hotels, and that was a huge chance for us."

While Coopers' share of the SA market jumped from 8 per cent to 20 per cent in a flash, a few other things started to help as well. More money was put into marketing, a concerted effort was made to target young people through universities, and Coopers Pale Ale was born.

Pale Ale started life as a Light Dinner Ale in the mid-1980s but never really took off. It made a comeback as Carrington Ale but was only available at the Earl of Aberdeen pub in the city. Then in about 1990 it was relaunched as Pale Ale, with the green label, but it was not until Glenn put some marketing muscle behind it in 1994 that it exploded. And not only in SA. "Pale Ale was the thing that drove interstate sales," Glenn says. "You didn't have to sell it, people wanted it."

When Glenn and Tim joined the company about 90 per cent of its beers were sold in SA. Now it's about 33 per cent, although the amount sold in SA has not fallen. Pale Ale now accounts for 62 per cent of Coopers' sales.

The rise was also emblematic of the changing nature of the Australian beer landscape. Australian beer drinkers were always highly parochial. There was West End locally, Victoria Bitter across the border, Tooheys in New South Wales, XXXX in Queensland and Swan in Western Australia. Even at the end of the 1990s VB still accounted for a quarter of national sales. It's less than half that now, mainly because smaller brewers and imports have started to fill the gap of changing tastes.

Chuck Hahn has been one of the catalysts in the development of the local industry. Through his Sydney Malt Shovel brewery the American-born brewer helped in this diversification through brands such as James Squire. Hahn says Coopers also played a big role. "People used to think if a beer was cloudy it was off," Hahn says. "They were the first people who really promoted the concept, cloudy but fine. They were the only ones that continued to produce real ales for a long time."

The cloudiness of the flagship Ale and Pale Ale is a product of the brewing process. It has been a key marketing point for Coopers. Its "Cloudy but Fine" redefined expectations and started a trend of cheeky and clever advertising campaigns. Alongside Glenn Cooper, the head of advertising firm kwp!, Andrew Killey, has held the brewer's account for almost 20 years. Killey says even though some may regard the cousins as establishment types, coming from the eastern suburbs, going to private schools and Tim's membership of the Liberal Party, they are "rebels" and that sense of the outsider informs their advertising. "That is why a lot of the work that has been done over the years has had a sense of humour and a sense of cheekiness, a little bit quirky and sometimes a little bit disrespectful," he says.

Glenn has a couple of favourite moments. One was when Lion took over SA Brewing in the 1990s. The buyout had been rumoured for some time and Glenn and Killey wanted to be ready. So they made up ads and mobile billboards with the slogan, "Phew, Lucky it wasn't our Coopers", and had them driven up and down Port Rd in front of the West End brewery. "It made TV, it went everywhere, it was massive, people got it," Glenn says.

The other was when Adelaide made the AFL Grand Final in 1997. According to Glenn, Killey came up with the slogan, "This Saturday, we are making Melbourne Bitter". Glenn refined it to, "This Saturday, we are making Victoria Bitter", and printed thousands of T-shirts to push the message. "The guys at VB said, 'that's a bit rough' but we had a good relationship with CUB in those days," he says now with a smile. "One of the heads of CUB said, 'Glenn, I have to say, very, very good, but don't quote me on that'."

Not that relations with rival brewers are always so cordial. The attempted takeover of Coopers by Lion Nathan is described by both Tim and Glenn as the most stressful time of their tenure. In 2005 Lion tried to buy the company for $352 million, offering $260 a share. It later increased the offer to $420 million. It was an outstanding valuation which stood to make the 140 Coopers shareholders wealthy. "At the time our shares were only worth $45," Tim says. It degenerated into a nasty war when the board rejected the offer.

In the week before the shareholder vote Lion took out a series of full page newspaper ads, quoting interstate business journalists who couldn't believe Coopers wouldn't sell and questioning the ethics of the family's share dealings. "Barbara (Tim's wife) would get The Australian and The Advertiser each morning ... and she would look at the papers quickly and say, 'don't read The Advertiser today, that's not so good, read The Australian', or, 'read The Advertiser today don't read The Australian," Tim says.

Glenn says simply the company wasn't theirs to sell. "We see ourselves as only custodians of the brewery, and the objective is to build it stronger and pass it on," he says. "If we had started it we would have the right to sell it, but we don't have the right to just chuck it away." Glenn took great satisfaction when more than 90 per cent of shareholders voted against the takeover, but still holds some anger towards those who wanted to sell - particularly those who had done nothing to build the company. "Some of them still went out and bagged the shit out of us and they didn't understand, or didn't want to understand; we got the brewery through a tough time, we had built a brand new brewery, which was state of the art, we have never not paid a dividend. Normally in any company you would get a pat on the back."

The company is still growing. Last year it brewed a record 63 million litres of beer and has started to diversify, adding the Japanese beer Sapporo to the list of locally-made brews. Coopers can make 90 million litres a year at Regency Park before it needs to expand further.

Glenn and Tim will oversee the company for the foreseeable future but they are keen for the fifth generation to develop into the sixth. Glenn's daughter, Rachel Cooper-Casserly, works in the marketing department, and Tim's children could also come on board. But nothing is guaranteed. "We like the idea of the children being educated and going out and learning," Glenn says. "I think that formula is very sound, particularly if they are told none of them have a guaranteed job."

Being family-owned is a theme Glenn has played on for a long time, as some of the company's slogans over the years illustrate: "Handmade by the Cooper Family", and "Being a Cooper is not all beer and skittles, we never play skittles", being just two. "People want to meet a Cooper," Glenn says. "It's a strong position for us."
Oliver
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Re: Feature story on Coopers

Postby Guru » Thursday Apr 26, 2012 6:32 pm

Great article, thoroughly enjoyed that. Keeps my idea that some breweries still brew for the drinker and not the shareholder.
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Re: Feature story on Coopers

Postby Nedg » Wednesday Dec 19, 2012 4:49 pm

Guru wrote:Great article, thoroughly enjoyed that. Keeps my idea that some breweries still brew for the drinker and not the shareholder.

wow what an awesome article........made up my mind...im sticking with coopers...good onyas
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