The Independent Brewers Association (IBA) has announced that The Indies Awards and BrewCon will not take place in 2025, and in the best interest of the Association and its members both will return in 2026.
The IBA said the decision to postpone both events has come as a result of the challenges the brewing industry is currently facing as well as the time challenges its team faces in putting both events on.
In its statement about BrewCon, the IBA said: “It goes without saying that the industry is struggling to maintain the level of sponsorship required to deliver the plethora of industry and consumer events. We all go cap in hand to the same stakeholders and so we feel that it is important to take a leadership role in this space and to conserve as many resources as possible while still delivering maximum benefit.
“Events like BrewCon consume a significant amount of time, resources and money and are usually delivered by a large team or a commercial operation. We are neither, and so with 2.6 team members we must prioritise the activities that stand to benefit as many members as possible.”
With regard to The Indies Awards, the IBA said: “We know that there are many other beer competitions in Australia but we are really proud of the Indies and how it has evolved in the last few years. We’ve invested considerable time and effort into our judging program and we know that entrants value the improved feedback process – we’re calling it best-in-class.
“But unlike other organisations that run beer awards in Australia, we do not own the judging hub/ceremony venue, the competition management system or have a dedicated competition team that can be spread across other events.
“The 2024 Indies ran at a loss as entries, entrants and sponsorship income were significantly down from previous years and with the current economic environment, we simply can’t take the risk so we’ve had to make the super difficult decision to shelve the Indies Awards in 2025.
“But rest assured, they will be back – and with a facelift. We will work with our supportive and committed Advisory Committee to reinvent the program. We want to avoid any duplication with other awards programs and to pursue our commitment to better integrate our direct-to-consumer work with the Awards in future.”
The IBA said it will be partnering with the Australian International Beer Awards in 2025 to shine a light on independent breweries by adding two new trophies – Champion Independent Brewery and Champion Independent Beer.
