National bottleshop chain BWS has announced the breweries that feature among the winners of its Local Luvva campaign.

Brisbane’s Aether Brewing, South Australia’s Little Bang Brewing Co, 3 Ravens in Melbourne and Albany’s Wilson Brewing Company won, along with Derwent Valley’s Plenty Cider were named, in addition to NSW’s Akasha Brewing. Billson’s, a 150-year-old brewery and distillery in Beechworth, was also named a fan favourite, but in the spirits/premix category.

As a result of the campaign, designed to source and range more local brands in stores, each brewery will receive ranging, or additional ranging if they are already listed, in BWS stores. They will also receive marketing and advertising support from the Endeavour Drinks Group-owned company.

BWS launched the Local Luvva campaign in July this year, asking customers to vote on what drinks they want to see more off. The company also invested several million dollars in a marketing campaign as part of the initiative, featuring local brands on billboards and digital screens across the country which they might not have been able to access otherwise.

Today BWS announced 18 independent suppliers will receive new or extended listings in their stores, out of 300 independent winemakers, brewers and distillers that entered.

50,000 customers voted online, with three winners named in every state in separate categories.

“It’s really good news,” Aether owner and brewer Dave Ward said. “We are super pumped for the additional brand promotion, and being the winner of this amazing campaign by BWS means that we are going to get huge support and help in growing our reach and presence.

“That means more people know who we are, and we can get more of our award-winning beer into people’s hands. This makes for a very happy brewery.”

Dave Padden from Akasha told Brews News that the team were looking forward to getting even more Akasha beer into the hands of craft beer fans.

“We love our locals and are blown away that so many of them have voted for us in the BWS Local Luvva campaign!”

Matty and Jessica Wilson, owners of Wilson Brewing Company, which last week caused controversy with a Facebook post which was quickly taken down, said the BWS win meant a lot of hard work had paid off.

“From a practical perspective, it means the opportunity to climb on to the next rung of the distribution ladder. We’ve been working hard for over a year to get our beer into every BWS store in our amazing state of Western Australia,” Matty Wilson said.

3 Ravens general manager Nathan Liascos said the Local Luvva’s win was a “wonderful reminder” that even in Melbourne’s strict lockdowns, people were still interested in what the team were brewing, and Little Bang Brewing Company co-founder Ryan Davidson said that local support was an upside to an “insane year”.

BWS local manager Richard Mok said it was a great opportunity for them to hear what customers had to say about their local producers.

“This campaign has been all about celebrating our local heroes and trying to encourage more customers to become lovers of local products. Now that we’ve seen more customers than ever try local, we hope they have found new homegrown favourites.

“We are now working with the 18 winners on how to best expand their range within our store network,” he said.