{"id":27004,"date":"2025-09-17T03:14:07","date_gmt":"2025-09-17T03:14:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/27004\/"},"modified":"2025-09-17T03:14:07","modified_gmt":"2025-09-17T03:14:07","slug":"award-winning-craft-brewer-hop-federation-set-to-close-operations-next-month","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/27004\/","title":{"rendered":"Award-winning craft brewer Hop Federation set to close operations next month"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cWhile it\u2019s sad to say goodbye, we\u2019re proud of the team and what they\u2019ve created \u2013 really great beer,\u201d said Hirst Tristram.<\/p>\n

Hop Federation was started by Simon and Nicki Nicholas in 2013 before being acquired by Kono in 2020.<\/p>\n

The company currently employs five people.<\/p>\n

Kono said it was working closely with the team to support them through the transition.<\/p>\n

Hop Federation will continue brewing for the coming weeks, while its award-winning brews will continue to be distributed in both kegs and cans across New Zealand until 2026.<\/p>\n

The brewery was recently up four golds at the NZ Brewers Guild Awards for its Pilsner, Lager, Hazy IPA and seasonal NZH-109.<\/p>\n

The craft beer sector has been rocked by the closure of several high-profile brewers over the past couple of years.<\/p>\n

Auckland business Cowabunga went into liquidation last year<\/a>, with liquidator Damien Grant citing a \u201ccrowded market\u201d.<\/p>\n

Deep Creek<\/a> was placed into liquidation in October 2023. A recent liquidator\u2019s report said ASB had recovered 60% of the brewery\u2019s debt after an asset fire sale, but all other creditors were still collectively owed about $1.4 million.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Epic Brewing Company<\/a> went into liquidation after experiencing financial difficulties because of poor economic conditions. A buyer was found a month later.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cWhile it\u2019s sad to say goodbye, we\u2019re proud of the team and what they\u2019ve created \u2013 really great…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":27005,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[9526,2546,26862,26857,26861,138,651,26856,6097,25293,26858,2454,440,4486,26860,111,139,1536,69,26859,1551,61,1533,10000],"class_list":["post-27004","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-another","tag-awardwinning","tag-blow","tag-brewer","tag-brewery","tag-business","tag-close","tag-craft","tag-down","tag-federation","tag-hop","tag-industry","tag-local","tag-month","tag-motuekabased","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-next","tag-nz","tag-operations","tag-set","tag-to","tag-will","tag-wind"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27004","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27004"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27004\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27005"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27004"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27004"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27004"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}