Maine Beer Box heads overseas again, while brewers grapple with growth
File Photo / Knack Factory
The Maine Beer Box, shown here in Portland, will ship out Friday for Halifax, Nova Scotia.
The Maine Beer Box is due to ship out tomorrow from Portland, bound for the Seaport Cider and Beer Fest in Halifax, Nova Scotia.
The box — a custom-built, 40-foot-long, refrigerated shipping container with 78 beer taps and a self-contained draft system — is making its third international voyage. The box traveled to Leeds, England, last fall and first went abroad in 2017, to Reykjavik, Iceland.
The trips are intended to introduce Maine craft beer to overseas export markets, and the effort is paying off, says the box’s owner, the Maine Brewers’ Guild.
Baxter Brewing in Lewiston, D.L. Geary Brewing in Portland, Rising Tide Brewing in Portland, and Sebago Brewing in Gorham all have sold orders through Beer52, a craft beer club based in the U.K. that sends selected brews to customers around the world.
“This is an exciting next step in the evolution of the Maine Beer Box,” said the guild’s executive director, Sean Sullivan, in a news release. “We had already seen an increase in beer tourism as a result of our trips overseas and now brewers are making those first important steps towards establishing new international markets.”
But with the growth abroad, local brewers have had to deal with new business challenges.
The brewers selling their products through Beer52 have been working with the Maine International Trade Center to handle the complex overseas logistics and market development. The beer companies have also had to secure export credit insurance, obtained through the Export-Import Bank of the United States, a government agency, and NaviTrade Structured Finance, a consultant with an office in Falmouth.
The four Maine breweries have already shipped close to $300,000 in beer protected by export credit insurance, according to the release.
Sebago Brewing founder Kai Adams said, "We certainly want to take advantage of these new opportunities to sell our product beyond the U.S. market, but it's a business strategy that does come with additional risk."
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