Irish brewery wants its spot in Macau’s PSC platform

From left: Scott Baigent, Niall Murray and Cameron Wallace

An Irishman, Australian and New Zealander walk into a bar on an early Sunday evening where they sample, savor and socialize over craft beers with names like The Barefoot Bohemian, Howling Gale and The Full Irish.

The location is Taipa village-based Prem1er Bar, whose owner Niall Murray is joined by business partners Aussie Cameron Wallace and Kiwi Scott Baigent, who reside in Ireland as masterbrewers of the alcoholic beverage.

It would seem that businesses from Portuguese-speaking countries (PSC) are not alone in viewing the MSAR as a gateway to mainland China. Wallace and Baigent, through enlisting the local expertise of Murray, are strategizing over how to bring their beer from Ireland to the East Asia region, through Macau.

Their company, Eight Degrees, is exporting around a dozen unique craft beers, each fashioned with a strict adherence to German brewing methodology, the use of naturally soft water and their rejection of chemicals. The company’s tagline, “Naturally Adventurous”, could hardly be more Australasian.

The duo were in Macau to showcase their products to the region, in person, for the first time. They say that they want to use their Macau connection to expand their distribution network in East Asia.

“A few years ago, we saw an opportunity with many Irish breweries looking west – to the United States,” Wallace told the Times on Sunday evening. “For us, we don’t see any reason why you would want to try to compete with 5,000 other craft beer breweries, when there is such an incredible opportunity in looking in the other direction.”

“We think that we have something to offer the Far East through Macau,” added Baigent, “and we have Niall [Murray] here to help us ensure the quality; that the beer is served right and in the proper way.”

Murray, who is also the chairman of the Irish Chamber of Commerce, is actively seeking out retailers and distributors in the territory and further afield.

“Originally being from Ireland, I am madly in love with Irish products and all things Irish,” he professed on Sunday evening, patriotically accompanied by the bar’s background music of U2s greatest hits.

“When I was back in Ireland […] I found Eight Degrees and called them up [to ask] if they’re exporting and if not, would they like to?”

Now, with the beer having made its way to Macau, his outstanding challenge is to ensure quality “from the beginning of production to the glass.”

“We are being quite [selective] about who we distribute to because I don’t want the beer sitting in warm warehouses, put on dirty tabs and served in the wrong glasses at the wrong temperature,” explained Murray. “It’s Eight Degrees for a reason.”

“What I fear – and what we all fear – is that when a bottle enters the country [mainland China], what are the chances that it will be refilled with something else and sold at the same price? This happens on a huge scale, so we want to make sure that we are very [selective].”

The Special Administrative Regions of Macau and Hong Kong have a comparative advantage in the region as distribution hubs for certain alcoholic beverages. Beer and wine in the two territories are subject to zero percent import tax, according to Murray, while it is significantly more economic to import spirits through Macau.

“I only have to pay 10 percent plus MOP25 per liter to bring whiskey into Macau, but I would have to pay 100 percent of the cost price [in tax] to bring it into Hong Kong,” he said as an example. In China, the taxation on alcoholic beverages is invariably higher and covers customs duty, value-
added tax and consumption tax.

These favorable conditions are partly the reason that Portuguese wine, intended for distribution further abroad, has established such a stronghold in the MSAR, with distributors in consensus and appreciation over its price-quality value.

However, Murray told the Times that importing beer into the territory remains a logistical nightmare, with it costing “just as much to transport it [the beer] from Hong Kong to Macau as it does from Ireland to Hong Kong.”

He said that his hopes now lie with the soon-to-open Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macau Bridge, which may have an impact in reducing transportation costs.

Once the beer arrives, the next challenge for the trio is convincing customers to part ways with their long-attached, favorite brands.

Murray provided examples of this kind of attachment from his own experience at Prem1er Bar, where “the Portuguese still love their Superbock and the long-time ‘gwai lo’ [slang term for westerner] still go for their Carlsberg and they’ll drink it all night.”

“Trying to convert those people is very difficult; they’re real creatures of habit,” he said.

“We want to challenge people’s perceptions of what beer can taste like. I also think that beer should be treated with a similar reverence to wine, in terms of matching with food and the way that it’s stored and served,” remarked Baigent. “There’s a big, wide world out there and you don’t always have to be consuming the same, sub-standard product that you’ve always had.

Saturday tasting attracts F&B opinion-leaders

On Saturday night, an intimate tasting event was held at Prem1er Bar, marking Eight Degrees’ first foray into Macau and Hong Kong. The tasting event invited 18 “food and beverage opinion-leaders” including representatives from casino operators, according to bar proprietor Niall Murray, who said attendees were “delighted” with the selection showcased.

“We had a lot of very important food and beverage opinion-leaders at the event and we wanted them to experience everything and ask any questions they had,” he told the Times.

“Oftentimes [for big corporations], when you want to bring in a new product, you have to justify why you’re going with one product over another. These tastings give us the chance to address everything and explain why this product is different,” added Murray. “The attendees were very delighted to hear about the German purity, no chemicals [present], and great water. […] They absolutely loved it.”

Meanwhile, Scott Baigent said that Saturday night’s tasting reminded him of when he and Cameron Wallace were just starting out in Ireland and “craft beer wasn’t particularly popular at all.”

“We only had two or three beers to offer [at that time] but we went through the tastings and you’d get this sort of amazement or wonder in their eyes,” he reminisced. DB