Fictive clusters: Crafty strategies in the New Zealand beer industry

ABSTRACT

The authors bring together two theoretical and empirical strands in economic geography – established work on clusters and nascent research on ‘fictive place’ – in order to introduce the concept of ‘fictive clusters’. To explore this concept, they examine the New Zealand craft beer sector, which has evolved from non-existence since the year 2000. This growth has precipitated the rise of a dynamic and innovative cluster at the local scale in Wellington. The fictive cluster is explored through the Wellington case study, and the authors pose various questions for future work based on this discursive geographical device. The construction and complicit reproduction of what they term a ‘fictive cluster’ has been central to the evolving strategies of the involved agents. Through the use of this term, the evolution of Wellington place-based brands that are increasingly territorially specific are seen as building competitive advantage based on constructed histories, environments, and other geographic characteristics.

EDITORS:

• Catriona Turner
• Stig-Erik Jakobsen
• Kerstin Potthoff

KEYWORDS:

• clusters
• craft beer
• fictive place
• local innovation
• New Zealand

Notes

1. One of the only images of women in the newspaper was a picture of a young woman wearing serving garb and pouring beer. By contrast, the men were portrayed as both producers and consumers of beer.

2. During the Industrial Revolution the clusters in Great Britain in the late 1700s were partly determined by the location of physical factors of production combined with material human-constructed advantages such as transport networks, along with proximity to market and availability of labour.

3. A broad definition of craft breweries is provided by the Brewers Association in USA (Brewers Association 2016), which argues that they must be small (production of less than 6 million barrels per year), independent (less than 25% of the industry owned by beverage companies that are not themselves craft brewers) and traditional (i.e. using ‘traditional or innovative brewing ingredients and their fermentation’).

4. Independent Liquor developed as a company producing ready-to-drink premixed spirits (RTDs), before it moved seriously into the beer market with cheaper bulk brands of beer (Ranfurly and NZ lager) and the holding of franchises for imported brands such as Tuborg, Carlsberg, and Kingfisher. In 2009 it entered the craft beer sector by launching its Boundary Road label (Donaldson 2012, 168).

5. In terms of the success and growth of craft beer production, there has been as notable emergence, from small and independent origins, of a few breweries that are in the process of globalising their operations: after developing export markets, Moa and Tuatara have signalled that they will establish some plants overseas in order to tap new markets for keg and tap beer in Australia, Asia, and Europe.

6. The total does not include brands such as Monteiths and Speights owned by Lion Nathan and DB, but the list does include smaller breweries such as Emerson’s Founders, and Boundary Road, which are owned by the three big companies. The latter brands have largely retained their brewing operations, often under the supervision of their original owners, but the owners have both invested in expanded production and taken over the marketing chain.

7. Wellington is the home of Weta Workshops, responsible for digital production and special effects in films such as The Lord of the Rings and Hobbit trilogies.

8. This differs from the 11 listed in Table 1. Table 2 includes 2 breweries not counted by ANZ (Wild and Woolly, and Tiamana) but excludes Regent 58 (in Wairarapa).