Our Tuatara Brewery’s move from the Kapiti Coast to its new home at Brewtown in Upper Hutt in late 2024 and early 2025 gave us the opportunity to reimagine our brewing operations and bring sustainability to the fore.

The brewery was designed around equipment and technology that allows us to make beer, cider and RTDs while using less energy and water.

Key to lowering our water use has been a new tunnel pasteuriser with improved temperature control, chemical water treatment and more efficient water pumps, which allow more beer to be pasteurised while sending less water down the drain.

Water and chemical use have also been reduced through a new centralised clean-in-place system, which allows the brewery to recover and reuse water and cleaning solution more than once.

Reducing energy use was another top priority in the brewery design. A newer heating system replaced an outdated tube calandria in the brewhouse, and along with improved extract recovery, this should increase the yield while reducing organic load in our wastewater. Jacketed bright beer tanks have also removed the need for inefficient cool storerooms. It is difficult to compare energy efficiencies fairly between the old Kapiti and new Brewtown sites. However, more metering is available at the new Brewtown location, and we expect to be able to compare Tuatara’s energy efficiency from a 2025 baseline at the end of 2026.

The brewery team isn’t stopping there and is chasing even more ambitious targets for water and energy efficiency in 2026.