From brewing a one-off beer specifically for a music festival to opening their own brewery location, Otherside Brewing Co, led by Head Brewer Rhys Lopez, has quickly become one of Fremantle’s most well-known and beloved craft names.

Otherside now owns the largest craft beer dedicated music festival space, Freo.Social, and has recently bought into bar Mojo’s, an iconic live original music venue, to continue supporting the local arts and music scene. Konvoy, the leader in Keg Pooling has supported this frictionless growth by reducing the logistical difficulties that come from being based in Western Australia.

Connecting Otherside to the other side

One of the challenges that face many Australian businesses is its sheer size – we are burdened with vast plains and lands between coast to coast. Rhys Lopez explained that they often felt “isolated” and that it was harder to communicate with suppliers based in the eastern states, with the added layer of difficulty around time zones. To alleviate some of the challenges that breweries in Western Australia face, Konvoy brought on a dedicated West Australian representative to remove the barriers that Otherside was facing.

As Otherside continued to grow exponentially outside of its home state towards the east, this posed logistical challenges – “managing kegs is always a difficult system, people love stealing them. Often when you send your kegs, you risk losing them and when you are sending them as far as states such as NSW and VIC, you are almost guaranteed to never get them back.”

“Konvoy’s keg pooling system has helped eliminate these challenges and provided a frictionless supply of our product. By not owning the kegs, we no longer have to worry about the logistics of sending our product to the breweries and getting the kegs back. Konvoy now takes complete control of this so we are able to pivot our focus to what we do best, brewing beers.”

Rhys continues “Konvoy’s technology has also helped ease the challenges of sending our brews across such a long distance. Their tracking technology enables us to see exactly where our product is in transit and also monitor the environmental conditions of our beers. It really gives us peace of mind knowing that our brews are going to retain their taste and quality no matter where in Australia they are.”

Data is Golden

Konvoy understood the challenges that breweries were facing when it came to the logistics, servicing and supply of kegs. Their innovative keg pooling model was established to reduce frictions in the supply chain and enable breweries to focus on increasing their output and efficiency.

Rhys explains that “we were interested in working with Konvoy from the very beginning as their keg tracking technology enables us to access reports and assess faults in our system. It’s a great troubleshooting tool. It allows us to quickly isolate the problem and limits product wastage. In this industry there really is no such thing as too much information.”

“As we are still in our growth development stage, it’s good to not have to put all of our capex budget into our kegs. Konvoy manages every aspect of the kegs from production, servicing, and tracking which frees up our capital investment for other parts of the business. We really just want to focus on what we do best, brewing beer.”

Growing Together

“We have had steady growth the last few years and Konvoy has supported us in ways that have ensured a frictionless scale up. Konvoy has flat rates for all kegs based on your company’s keg turn around which was extremely beneficial during Covid lockdowns. When keg sales inevitably dropped as venues were closing, this flat rate fee provided a sense of security and really reduced our worries during such an uncertain time. It’s this kind of service that we really appreciate.”

To understand how Konvoy can partner with your business visit www.konvoykegs.com or give Claire Donovan (claire@konvoykegs.com) a call who is based in Perth and would be happy to show you how Konvoy make a difference and connect you with the other states and the global market.