Strong local intra-industry collaboration for low-cost, low-waste and low-carbon craft beer production

This is a case study of a micro-sized SME that produces local craft beer while focusing on reducing both waste and CO2 emissions, and increasing engagement in the regional craft brewer sector. Through collaboration with the other craft breweries who consider themselves as allies in the competition against large-scale breweries, the SME manages to reduce costs and create a community of learning and sharing amongst regional craft breweries.

The brewery, Finn, was founded in 2012 in Landskrona, in the region of Scania, Sweden, by three friends, an economist and two engineers, with a passion for craft beer. Their mission was to make people passionate for local and high-quality craft beer. Finn offers a broad variety of locally produced beer, which they produce with traditional craft brewing methods combined with innovative engineering. 

The Finn brewery considers sustainability as crucial for the long-term survival of their business and is striving to improve their sustainability with the resources at hand. Due to the company’s small size, their main challenge is to keep the small business profitable and secure jobs while they compete with large-scale breweries that can offer beer at lower prices and also invest more resources in sustainability. Finn’s mission statement is to produce high quality beer at a reasonable price and as sustainably as possible.

Finn has a broad range of sustainability practices throughout the entire value chain. They optimize packaging and transport, as well as the production processes to reduce CO2 emissions and waste. Finn engages socially through practices like supporting diversity through collaboration with pride organizations, local community engagement for beer festivals, and engagement for responsible consumption. Moreover, Finn is well-connected to other craft brewers in the region and was engaged in initiating a consolidated transport of end products from several craft breweries in southern part of Sweden to their main customer, the federal liqueur monopoly, that is located in the middle of Sweden. An interesting aspect in the collaboration of craft breweries is that they do not consider each other as competitors. Instead, the craft breweries collaborate and support each other in their struggle to compete against large-scale breweries in a highly regulated alcoholic beverage sector. This led to the founding of Scania´s alcoholic beverage producers´ association in which Finn has taken a leading role. The association organizes regional festivals to further sales of craft beverages, as well as capacity building events for their members. In a collaboration with Lund University (SustBeerLab), nine sustainable brewing principles have been co-created amongst the members and other actors in the field. 

Pathway maps represent the sequence businesses followed to implement successful sustainability practices and identify emerging ones within firms. The pathways also reveal the diversity of actors that begin to form sustainability enabling ecosystems for businesses to adopt, deploy or test sustainability practices.

Finn’s sustainability practices are enabled by a number of key actors, policies, resources, and partnerships: