50 Influential Leaders in Brewing in Australia and New Zealand

Last updated: June 2026

Introduction

The brewing industry across Australia and New Zealand is home to some of the most significant beverage leadership in the Asia-Pacific region. As of June 2026, the Australian beer market is valued at more than AUD 35 billion and is projected to grow steadily through the early 2030s, while New Zealand's brewing sector contributes $3.3 billion annually to the national economy, with craft beer representing approximately 20 percent of the total market value. These are not peripheral industries. They are substantial, complex, and deeply contested spaces where the decisions made by the people on this list shape what every Australian and New Zealand drinker finds on tap, on shelves, and at their table.

The 50 leaders here were selected for a documented, fact-checked contribution to brewing in this region, confirmed through primary sources dated within the last 12 months. Rather than recycling the same handful of names that appear on every beverage industry list, this directory surfaces the people genuinely shaping ANZ brewing in 2026. Some lead businesses that sell hundreds of millions of dollars of beer each year. Others run breweries that measure output in thousands of kegs but win every major award in the country. All of them are doing work that matters to how this industry develops. As of June 2026, every role and organisation listed was verified through a primary source.

If your leadership team is navigating the people dynamics that come with growth in the food and beverage sector, including difficult conversations, team alignment, and the cultural challenges that determine whether strategy actually gets executed, book Jonno White to facilitate a Working Genius session, leadership workshop, or executive offsite. Jonno is the author of Step Up or Step Out (10,000+ copies sold) and a Certified Working Genius Facilitator who works with organisations in the food, beverage, and hospitality sectors around the world. Email jonno@consultclarity.org.

Why Brewing Leadership Matters in Australia and New Zealand

ANZ brewing leadership matters because the sector employs a disproportionate share of its workforce through independent businesses fighting for survival in a market shaped by excise tax pressure, tap contract restrictions, and rapid category shifts. Understanding who leads this sector means understanding the forces shaping what Australians and New Zealanders drink and who gets to make it.

Independent breweries represent around 8 percent of Australia's total beer market by volume but employ close to 60 percent of the people working in the entire sector, according to figures from the Independent Brewers Association as of February 2025. That outsized employment contribution makes the viability of independent brewing a genuine workforce issue, not just a consumer preference question.

The sector is also navigating structural forces that no individual brewery can solve alone. Excise tax on beer in Australia increases automatically twice a year, indexed to the Consumer Price Index, and as of 2025 accounts for approximately 45 percent of the cost to produce a case of craft beer at a mid-sized independent brewery. Tap contracts that lock the majority of Australia's draught beer taps to the two dominant multinational brewing groups continue to limit market access for independent producers. Consolidation has accelerated, with close to 50 independent Australian breweries entering voluntary administration in the 12 months to early 2025, according to Kylie Lethbridge of the Independent Brewers Association.

At the same time, genuine bright spots are reshaping the landscape. The non-alcoholic beer category now accounts for approximately 10 percent of overall beer sales in Australia as of early 2026, driven by breweries willing to invest in the technical challenge of making alcohol-free beer that actually tastes good. Guinness sales surged 47 percent in Australia in 2025, with growth of 70 percent among young women aged 19 to 25, signalling that a new generation of drinkers is arriving with broader and more exploratory palates. New Zealand's craft beer scene continues to produce world-class breweries at a rate that belies the country's small population, with Brave Brewing Co and Garage Project both achieving international recognition in 2025 and 2026.

The leaders who are navigating all of this simultaneously, running commercial operations, managing teams, fighting for policy change, and still brewing beers worth drinking, are the people this directory is built to surface.

For a broader view of food and beverage industry leadership, see the directory of influential leaders in food consumer products. For the manufacturing leadership context in which many of these businesses operate, the guide to manufacturing leadership thought leaders in Australia and New Zealand covers the sector's most important voices.

How This List Was Compiled

Each leader on this list was selected for a documented, fact-checked contribution to brewing in Australia and New Zealand, confirmed through primary sources dated within the last 12 months. Every current role and organisation was verified against the relevant organisation's own website, a primary news source, or an industry body publication within the last 12 months. Leaders whose current roles could not be verified to this standard were not included. The list spans corporate executives, independent craft founders, industry body leaders, and specialists in brewing quality, sustainability, and advocacy, representing the full width of the sector as it operates in mid-2026.

Category One: Shaping the Biggest Brewing Businesses

The corporate breweries and peak industry bodies operating across Australia and New Zealand collectively set the parameters within which the entire sector functions. The executives and leaders in this category manage organisations that between them account for the majority of beer consumed in both countries, advocate for the conditions in which all breweries operate, and build the institutional knowledge that sustains brewing quality across multiple generations.

1. Amanda Sellers

Asahi Beverages APAC

Amanda Sellers is the Group CEO of Asahi Beverages APAC and a member of the global Asahi Group Executive Committee. She joined Asahi Beverages in 2019 as Group Chief Financial Officer and was appointed to the Group CEO role permanently in December 2023, becoming the first female CEO of a regional headquarters within the Asahi Group globally. Her career spans more than 25 years in the beverages industry, including senior roles at Treasury Wine Estates and Pernod Ricard across Australia, Europe, and Asia.

Her contribution to ANZ brewing leadership is in steady, structural leadership through a period of significant organisational change at Australia's largest brewing group. Under her direction, Asahi Beverages consolidated its three subsidiary CEO roles into a single Chief Commercial Officer function in 2025, expanded its APAC regional scope, and continued its sustainability programmes across its manufacturing network. She serves as a board member of Australian Red Cross Lifeblood and DrinkWise, reflecting a view of corporate responsibility that extends beyond the business itself.

2. Anubha Sahasrabuddhe

Lion ANZ

Anubha Sahasrabuddhe is the CEO and Managing Director of Lion ANZ, appointed in October 2025 as the inaugural leader of a newly unified Australian and New Zealand business. She joined Lion in 2021 as Chief Marketing Officer before becoming Chief Growth Officer and co-leading the Australian business from mid-2024. Under her leadership, Lion ANZ achieved B Corporation certification in 2025, becoming Australasia's first large-scale carbon neutral brewer, and the unified ANZ structure represents one of the most consequential structural changes in Lion's recent history.

Her contribution to brewing leadership sits at the intersection of brand transformation and strategic business architecture. Her background building growth strategies for Coca-Cola and Mars Wrigley across multiple markets brings a consumer and commercial perspective to the management of Lion's portfolio of iconic ANZ brands including XXXX, Tooheys, Little Creatures, Stone and Wood, Speight's, and Emerson's. Her 2026 commentary on 2025 as "a milestone year in Lion's history" signals genuine confidence in the direction the unified structure is taking.

3. Michael Shearer

Coopers Brewery

Michael Shearer is the Managing Director of Coopers Brewery, appointed in March 2025 as the first person outside the Cooper family to lead the business in its more than 160-year history. He joined Coopers in 2004 and served as General Manager before his appointment as Managing Director, making the transition one of internal continuity rather than external disruption. Coopers remains the sole major Australian-owned brewery and continues to hold approximately 5 percent of the national beer market.

His specific contribution is in guiding Coopers through a generational leadership transition while maintaining the growth trajectory built during Tim Cooper's era as Managing Director. In the 2024-25 financial year, Coopers defied a national beer market contraction to record a 2.4 percent increase in sales volumes to 80.6 million litres, a result that reflects the operational and commercial discipline he helped build over two decades as General Manager before taking the top role.

4. Dr Tim Cooper

Coopers Brewery

Dr Tim Cooper is the Chief Brewer and Director of Coopers Brewery, a role he moved into in early 2025 after serving as Managing Director for more than 23 years. A fifth-generation family member, he joined Coopers in 1990 as Technical Manager, completing his Master of Science in brewing at the University of Birmingham and an MD from the University of Bristol. He served as Chair of the Brewers Association of Australia and as President of the global Institute of Brewing and Distilling in the United Kingdom.

His contribution over more than three decades is foundational to what Coopers is today. Under his tenure as Managing Director, the brewery grew into the country's largest independent brewing operation while remaining authentically committed to its naturally conditioned ale traditions. His continued role as Chief Brewer means the technical knowledge and quality standards he built remain embedded in the brewery's daily practice, providing continuity through the leadership transition to Michael Shearer.

5. Melanie Cooper AM

Coopers Brewery

Melanie Cooper AM is the Chair of Coopers Brewery, appointed to the role in December 2023 as the first female chair in the company's history. She is also the company's Director of Corporate Affairs. A fifth-generation family member, her Member of the Order of Australia recognises her service to business and to the South Australian community. Her governance and corporate affairs background shapes how Coopers communicates with government, regulators, and the public on issues ranging from excise reform to community investment.

Her contribution to ANZ brewing leadership is in the governance and strategic direction of Australia's most significant family-owned brewery at a genuinely consequential moment. The decisions made during her tenure as Chair, including the appointment of the first non-family Managing Director and the opening of a new $70 million facility incorporating a whisky distillery and hospitality complex, will shape Coopers' next decade more than any single commercial decision.

6. Craig Baldie

Lion ANZ

Craig Baldie is the Chief Operating Officer and New Zealand Country Director of Lion ANZ, appointed to that role in September 2025 as part of the structural changes that accompanied Anubha Sahasrabuddhe's appointment as CEO. He previously served as Lion New Zealand's Managing Director, a role in which he oversaw the 2024 centenary celebrations of New Zealand Breweries, the predecessor company to Lion NZ, which marked one of the most significant corporate anniversaries in New Zealand commercial history.

His specific contribution is in sustaining and articulating the Lion New Zealand brand story at a time of significant structural change. His deep familiarity with New Zealand's beer market, its retailer relationships, and the specific regulatory and cultural environment of Aotearoa makes him the operational anchor for Lion's NZ operations as the unified ANZ structure takes shape under Sahasrabuddhe's strategic direction.

7. Jack Viney

Moo Brew

Jack Viney is the Head Brewer of Moo Brew, the Tasmanian brewery based at the Moorilla estate on the Derwent River in Hobart, and just the third head brewer in the brewery's 20-year history. The Crafty Pint featured Viney in its 2026 coverage ahead of Moo Brew's 20th birthday celebrations, a milestone that placed the brewery among the small group of Australian craft operations with a genuinely multi-decade legacy in a state that has produced some of the country's most distinctive beer culture.

His contribution is in stewarding a brewery whose identity is bound up with the art institution and estate that houses it, a creative brief with no direct parallel in Australian craft brewing. The Moorilla estate places Moo Brew in conversation with visual art, wine, and architecture in ways that have shaped both the brewery's aesthetic sensibility and its audience. His role as the third custodian of that identity in 20 years reflects the kind of long-term, quality-first brewing culture that produces enduring reputations rather than seasonal moments.

8. Kylie Lethbridge

Independent Brewers Association

Kylie Lethbridge is the CEO of the Independent Brewers Association, the peak body representing more than 400 independent brewery members across Australia. In that role she is the most prominent public voice for the structural reforms that the independent sector needs: excise tax reform, an ACCC inquiry into tap contract practices that lock the majority of Australia's draught taps to multinational operators, and greater government recognition of independent brewing's role as a significant employer of Australians. She has noted publicly that independent breweries, while representing only around 8 percent of Australia's total beer market by volume, employ close to 60 percent of the people working in the entire sector.

Her specific contribution is in sustained, evidence-based advocacy at a time when the sector needs it most. Her public commentary through 2024 and 2025 on the pace of brewery closures has been both honest and specific, naming the mechanisms creating unsustainable conditions rather than offering only general calls for support. She has also driven commercial partnerships that give independent members tangible market access, including agreements with Coles Liquor Group and broader work on national harmonisation of container deposit schemes.

9. Melanie Kees

Brewers Guild of New Zealand

Melanie Kees is the Executive Director of the Brewers Guild of New Zealand, the representative body for New Zealand's brewing industry. She leads the Guild through its annual New Zealand Beer Awards, membership development, the brewing sustainability programme, and advocacy work on behalf of Kiwi brewers. Her commentary at the 2025 NZBA reflected a thoughtful geographic view of where New Zealand's brewing future is being built, highlighting the emergence of regional beer destinations including Queenstown, the Southern Lakes, Nelson, Tasman, and North Island centres including Taranaki, Matakana, and Hawke's Bay.

Her contribution is in building the credibility and infrastructure of the NZBA as a genuinely world-class competition while simultaneously working to make the Brewers Guild's membership more useful to the breweries that rely on it. The 2026 awards mark the 20th year of the NZBA, a milestone that reflects the sustained quality of the Guild's work in building a competition that attracts respect from brewers internationally.

10. Tina Panoutsos

Asahi Beverages

Tina Panoutsos has more than 30 years in the Australian brewing industry, beginning as a quality assurance chemist at Carlton and United Breweries in 1989 and building a career that spanned brewing quality, sensory analysis, technical and commercial beverage education, and international beer judging at competitions including the World Beer Cup and the Australian International Beer Awards. In 2023 she received a Lifetime Achievement Award, with peers crediting her with materially raising the quality standard of beer in Australia. She has since transitioned into a role within the Asahi Beverages Group Innovation, Growth and Strategy team.

Her contribution sits in two areas. The first is the national sensory programme she built at CUB, which she described as a "valuable resource that has supported sensory leads and breweries to implement practices that ultimately result in quality beer" across more than 27 years. The second is her sustained work as a beer judge, educator, and advocate for women in the brewing industry, including her role as Head Judge at the 2025 New Zealand Beer Awards where her assessment of the category's technical evolution was widely quoted across both ANZ markets.

Category Two: The Non-Alcoholic and Innovation Leaders

Non-alcoholic beer is no longer a compromise category. The leaders in this section have invested years of technical development and commercial conviction in proving that alcohol-free brewing can produce beers that drinkers actively choose rather than reluctantly accept. Their work is reshaping what it means to be a brewer in 2026.

11. Andy Miller

Heaps Normal

Andy Miller is the Co-Founder and CEO of Heaps Normal, the Marrickville-based alcohol-free brewery he co-founded in 2018, launching publicly in July 2020. He has described his founding motivation as wanting to engage with Australian drinking culture, including beer's role in social connection and shared experience, without the alcohol component. In 2025, the Heaps Normal Health Club in Marrickville was named among the coolest retail experiences globally by the World Retail Congress, alongside names including Zara, Rolex, and Erewhon.

His specific contribution is in building a brand that reframes non-alcoholic beer as a cultural choice rather than a dietary restriction. In January 2026, Heaps Normal launched Australia's first commercially available non-alcoholic draught beer, a milestone that Miller has described as "symbolic of how far the non-alc category has matured and developed." The brewery also launched its own record label in 2024 and attracted investment from Robbie Williams in 2025, each move reflecting a consistently broader view of what a non-alcoholic brewery can represent.

12. Ben Holdstock

Heaps Normal

Ben Holdstock is the Co-Founder and Chief Product Officer of Heaps Normal, the brewer whose technical conviction made Heaps Normal commercially viable. His brewing background includes head brewer roles at 4 Pines and The Grifter in Sydney, and it was his sustained work on the technical challenge of fermentation without alcohol that turned the founders' concept into a product that could compete on quality in the mainstream craft market. He home-brewed five batches in his kitchen before the founders were satisfied with the result.

His contribution is the brewing architecture behind Heaps Normal's alcohol-free products, which use a specific yeast that naturally consumes very few sugars rather than boiling off or filtering out alcohol as major brewers do. The January 2026 draught launch was a direct product of his multi-year conviction that draught was "the missing piece for non-alc beer" and his determination to solve the technical challenge that had prevented the category from reaching pub taps in a commercially viable form.

13. Richard Jeffares

TWOBAYS Brewing Co

Richard Jeffares is the Founder and CEO of TWOBAYS Brewing Co, the gluten-free brewing company he launched in Melbourne after being diagnosed with Coeliac Disease in 2015. As a beer lover who could no longer drink it, he decided the appropriate response was to start a brewery rather than simply accept the limited options available. TWOBAYS is now one of the most recognised specialist craft brands in Australia, with a reputation built on competing on brewing quality rather than on dietary category alone.

His specific contribution is in demonstrating that a genuine personal need, rather than a commercial trend, can be the foundation of a brewery that earns the respect of the mainstream beer community. In late 2025, Jeffares announced TWOBAYS expansion into New Zealand, citing the absence of any geographic boundary for gluten-free consumers as the central logic of the move. His description of 1.37 million New Zealanders visiting Australia each year and encountering the brand suggests a commercially astute approach to market entry grounded in actual consumer behaviour.

14. Grace Fowler

Reckless Brewing Co

Grace Fowler is a Co-owner and Head Brewer of Reckless Brewing Co in Bathurst, New South Wales, a brewery she co-founded in 2019. Reckless markets itself as the largest woman-led-and-run brewery in Australia, with more than 50 percent of its management positions held by women, a figure Fowler describes as organic rather than engineered. Her career before Reckless included five years at Akasha Brewing, where she rose to senior brewer, following an earlier role at contract brewer Icon in western Sydney.

Her contribution to ANZ brewing leadership is in demonstrating what an inclusive workplace culture produces in brewing terms: a brewery with growing trophy recognition, a distinctive brand identity, and a team whose collective ownership of the product shows in the consistency of the output. Her involvement with Pink Boots Society Australia reflects an ongoing commitment to building pathways for women entering the industry at a time when the representation gap at senior levels remains significant.

15. Ava Winiata

Beer Baroness

Ava Winiata is the Owner of Beer Baroness in Christchurch, New Zealand, and a Pink Boots Society New Zealand committee member. She is also one of three people behind the @nzbeerfam Instagram community, which has become a gathering point for New Zealand's broader beer culture. Her advocacy work includes involvement with RespectED Aotearoa, a charitable trust that works to prevent sexual harm through education and training, reflecting a commitment to the safety and cultural wellbeing of the brewing community that extends beyond the product.

Her contribution to ANZ brewing is in the community infrastructure she helps maintain for women in New Zealand's beer scene. Cuisine Magazine's 2024 list of New Zealand's most influential and inspiring women in food and drink described her as "fighting the good fight for females in the New Zealand brewing community, advocating for it to be a safe space." In a sector where senior female representation remains limited, her combination of commercial brewing operation and community advocacy gives her an influence that extends well beyond the size of Beer Baroness itself.

16. Lauren Larman

Brood Fermentation / Clayton Hops

Lauren Larman is a brewer and winemaker at Brood Fermentation in New Zealand and the quality, innovation, and sales manager for Clayton Hops. Her work spans two of New Zealand's most significant agricultural industries, beer and natural wine, and her advocacy for New Zealand's hop and beer industry takes her to customers and distributors internationally. She serves as treasurer of Pink Boots Society New Zealand and is a member of Eat New Zealand's Kaitaki collective, which supports next-generation food leaders telling the Aotearoa food story.

Her contribution is in the breadth of perspective she brings to New Zealand's craft beverage scene. Cuisine Magazine's 2024 listing described her as someone who "consciously promotes the New Zealand hop, beer and natural-wine industry, working with customers and distributors all over the world to shed a light on the high-quality products New Zealand has to offer." Her work with Clayton Hops connecting New Zealand growers to international craft brewers is a direct contribution to the commercial infrastructure that makes New Zealand hops a global commodity.

Category Three: Building Independent Craft in Eastern Australia

The independent craft brewing scene in New South Wales, Queensland, and the Australian Capital Territory has produced some of the country's most commercially significant and culturally influential breweries. The founders and leaders in this category built their businesses from scratch in some of Australia's most competitive and expensive beer markets.

17. DJ McCready

Mountain Culture Beer Co

DJ McCready is the Co-Founder and CEO of Mountain Culture Beer Co in Katoomba, Blue Mountains, New South Wales. His Status Quo New England Pale Ale became the first beer from a debut brewery to win Australia's GABS Hottest 100 in its year of eligibility, then won the poll four consecutive years from 2022 through 2025. In November 2025, McCready was named Australia's Consumer and Lifestyle Executive of the Year at the CEO Magazine Executive of the Year Awards, the only Australian liquor industry representative recognised that year.

His contribution is in demonstrating that a craft brewery built on a single, obsessively refined core product and a genuinely local community connection can scale nationally without losing its identity. Mountain Culture's expansion from its original Katoomba brewpub to a production brewery in Emu Plains and a growing footprint of taprooms in Melbourne, Hobart, and at Western Sydney International Airport reflects a growth model that continues to put the beer first and the business second, producing results that other Australian craft breweries have studied closely.

18. Nick Cogger

Better Beer

Nick Cogger is the Co-Founder and CEO of Better Beer, the low-calorie beer brand he co-founded with Matt Ford and Jack Steele that recorded more than $95 million in retail sales in the year to early 2026, sold 100 million cans by mid-2025, and is available in more than 7,600 retailers nationally. Within less than four years of launch, Better Beer sat behind Coopers Brewery as the second-largest independent beer brand in Australia by volume. Better Beer's brewing process achieves 87 calories per can by eliminating excess sugars and carbohydrates.

His specific contribution is in demonstrating that a digitally native beer brand built around a health-conscious positioning can achieve commercial scale at a speed that traditional craft breweries rarely match. His description of the competitive landscape as one shaped by ownership dynamics, specifically the advantage of independence over corporate ownership in building direct consumer relationships, reflects a strategic clarity about where Better Beer's commercial position comes from and how to defend it.

19. Oscar McMahon

Young Henrys

Oscar McMahon is a Co-Founder of Young Henrys, the Newtown brewery he co-founded with Richard Adamson in 2012. His hospitality background and his deep roots in the Sydney music and arts community shaped Young Henrys from the beginning as a cultural institution that brews beer rather than a brewery that does marketing. The brewery's partnership with the 2026 Sydney Laneway Festival extended a decade of music and arts collaborations that has consistently placed Young Henrys at the intersection of craft beer and the creative economy of Sydney's inner west.

His contribution is in articulating and sustaining the idea that an independent brewery has an authentic role in the cultural life of a city. Young Henrys launched its own brewing scholarship for women in partnership with The Crafty Pint and TAFE NSW, installed a carbon capture system at its Newtown brewery, and has maintained its B Corporation certification through a period when many of its contemporaries have either sold or struggled. His public engagement with the challenges of finding a new home as the Newtown lease approached its end in 2025 and 2026 added honesty to a story that is usually told only in terms of growth.

20. Dan Hampton

Young Henrys

Dan Hampton is a Co-Founder and Director of Young Henrys, the person who joined Oscar McMahon and Richard Adamson in the earliest days as Head of Sales and whose commercial leadership has been central to Young Henrys' sustained national presence. At the 2025 Australian Liquor Industry Awards, Young Henrys won Best Independent Craft Beer for Newtowner and Best Cider for Cloudy Cider, wins that Hampton described as the product of obsessive attention to consistency across the entire team.

His contribution is in building the commercial infrastructure that allows a community-first brewery to compete nationally. His willingness to speak publicly about the emotional difficulty of facing the loss of the original Newtown home, while simultaneously driving momentum through 2025 and into 2026, reflects the kind of honest commercial leadership that the best independent brewery businesses require: an ability to hold the cultural story and the financial reality in the same sentence.

21. Mick Neil

Philter Brewing

Mick Neil is the Co-Founder and Managing Director of Philter Brewing in Marrickville, Sydney, which he co-founded with Stef Constantoulas. The brewery achieved a landmark result at the 2025 Australian International Beer Awards with four trophies, a result that followed years of building a reputation on the inner west Sydney brewing scene. Mick's background before Philter included senior commercial roles at surf lifestyle brand O'Neill.

His specific contribution is in the brand architecture and commercial strategy that has built Philter into a nationally distributed independent brewery without losing its Marrickville identity. The 2025 AIBA result, which placed Philter in the company of the country's most decorated independent breweries, reflected both the sustained quality of the brewing and the strength of the commercial foundation on which it sits. His ongoing LinkedIn engagement with the craft beer community makes him one of the more visible independent brewery voices in the national conversation.

22. Stef Constantoulas

Philter Brewing

Stef Constantoulas is a Co-Founder of Philter Brewing and brought to the business a background in senior commercial roles at Lion and Beam Suntory, experience that he and Mick Neil have consistently used to build Philter's relationships with retailers and on-premise venues in ways that many independent breweries struggle to replicate. His industry knowledge of how large brewery distribution and trade marketing works has directly informed how Philter has navigated a market structure that tends to favour the major players.

His contribution is in the commercial intelligence behind Philter's growth. Understanding how larger players structure their retailer and venue relationships, and where the gaps exist for an independent brand with genuine product quality, has been as important to Philter's commercial trajectory as the beer itself. The brewery's consistent presence at major awards and its growing national distribution reflect a strategy built on both product excellence and commercial rigour.

23. Judd Michel

Social Drinks Group

Judd Michel is the CEO of Social Drinks Group, the merged entity formed in February 2025 by the coming together of Melbourne's Hawkers Beer and Sydney's White Bay Brewery. His industry background before Social Drinks included CEO and Managing Director of Heineken Group in Australia and a former director role at Coca-Cola Amatil in alcohol and coffee, making him one of the most commercially experienced leaders to take the helm of an independent Australian craft brewing group.

His specific contribution is in providing experienced corporate leadership to an independent brewing group formed specifically to achieve the economies of scale that allow craft breweries to survive the structural challenges of the Australian market. The Social Drinks model, combining Hawkers' seven-million litre Melbourne facility with White Bay's two-million litre Sydney site under shared sales, marketing, supply chain, and finance functions, is one of the more pragmatic responses to the consolidation pressures that have closed or sold many of their contemporaries.

24. Adam Trippe-Smith

Social Drinks Group / White Bay Brewery

Adam Trippe-Smith is a Co-Founder of White Bay Brewery and a founding partner in Social Drinks Group. He also runs Konvoy, the beer logistics and keg rental business that plays a significant behind-the-scenes role in the distribution infrastructure of Australian craft beer. The Crafty Pint described him as one of the architects of the Social Drinks merger, a move he drove from a conviction that two complementary independent brands could survive the current market conditions together more easily than either could alone.

His contribution is in both the commercial brewing world, where White Bay's growth from a 2020 launch to a nationally recognised brand reflects his brand and distribution instincts, and the broader industry infrastructure, where his work at Konvoy addresses one of the genuine logistical bottlenecks for independent craft distribution. His perspective on how the Australian craft market works, from the inside of both a brewery and a logistics business, gives him an unusually complete view of the challenges and opportunities facing the independent sector.

25. Cheyne Meehan

Happy Valley Brewing

Cheyne Meehan is a Co-Founder of Happy Valley Brewing in Brisbane, Queensland, the brewery that won the Grand Champion Beer title at the 2026 Royal Queensland Beer and Distilled Spirits Awards in June 2026, part of a remarkable run of momentum for the Brisbane operation. The brewery has established a new home in Brisbane and continues to grow its footprint in the Queensland craft beer market, which has expanded rapidly in recent years.

His contribution is in building Happy Valley into one of Queensland's most consistently recognised independent brewing businesses at a time when the state's beer culture is expanding rapidly. His willingness to describe the awards recognition as a product of team effort, including both the brew floor and the front-of-house teams, reflects an approach to brewery leadership that values the full organisation rather than just the product.

26. Sara Meehan

Happy Valley Brewing

Sara Meehan is a Co-Founder of Happy Valley Brewing in Brisbane and brings to the business a complementary perspective on how the brewery connects with its community and builds its commercial relationships. The Crafty Pint's coverage of Happy Valley's 2026 award success described the brewery as "enjoying a tremendous start to their 2026," a momentum the Meehans have been building through a period of significant change as the brewery establishes its new Brisbane home.

The contribution of the co-founding partnership at Happy Valley is in building a brewery whose commercial ambition and community rootedness reinforce each other rather than competing. The brewery's presence at regional awards alongside its growing distribution and venue footprint reflects a deliberate approach to growth that does not require choosing between local identity and national ambition.

27. Tracy Margrain

BentSpoke Brewing

Tracy Margrain is the co-owner and head brewer of BentSpoke Brewing in Canberra, which was founded alongside Richard Watkins in 2014 and has since grown into one of Australia's most celebrated independent breweries. BentSpoke's flagship Crankshaft IPA won the GABS Hottest 100 in both 2021 and 2022, a back-to-back achievement that reflects the quality and consistency built at the brewery across more than a decade of operation in the national capital.

Her contribution is in building a technically excellent and nationally recognised independent brewery in a market, Canberra, that is often overlooked in the east coast craft narrative. Her public profile as one of the most experienced female head brewers in Australia, and the consistency with which she attributes BentSpoke's success to shared technical standards across the whole team, has made her a quietly influential figure for younger women entering the industry and looking for evidence that brewing careers at the highest level are accessible to them.

28. Alice Wilson

Reckless Brewing Co

Alice Wilson is a Co-owner of Reckless Brewing Co in Bathurst, New South Wales, which she co-founded in 2019 with Grace Fowler and Jarrod Moore. Reckless markets itself as the largest woman-led-and-run brewery in Australia, with more than 50 percent of its management positions held by women, a result that Wilson and Fowler describe as organic rather than deliberate policy. The brewery has built a growing trophy collection and a distinctive brand identity in a regional NSW market that has historically been more difficult for craft operations than Sydney or Melbourne.

Her contribution is in the commercial and operational side of a co-founded operation whose identity is built on both beer quality and workplace culture. Her involvement in the founding and growth of Reckless represents one of the cleaner examples in Australian craft brewing of a brewery whose external reputation for inclusivity is matched by the internal evidence of how its team is actually structured.

Category Four: Victoria, South Australia, and Pioneering Spirits

Victoria and South Australia are home to some of the oldest continuously operating craft breweries in Australia. The leaders in this category include the pioneers who were among the first to build craft beer cultures in their regions, as well as the newer voices who are continuing that tradition.

29. Paul Holgate

Holgate Brewhouse

Paul Holgate is the Co-Founder of Holgate Brewhouse in Woodend, Victoria, which he and his wife Tash founded in 1999 and have operated continuously for more than 26 years. The Holgate model, combining a production brewery, brewpub restaurant, boutique hotel, and contract brewing operation in a single regional destination an hour from Melbourne, is among the most studied examples of craft brewery longevity in Australia. The 25th anniversary celebrations in 2024 produced a 25 Beers for 25 Years series featuring collaborations with peers from across the Australian craft community.

His contribution to ANZ brewing is in the patient, quality-first approach to independent brewery building that he has modelled across more than a quarter of a century. At a time when many breweries are seeking scale, Holgate Brewhouse has maintained its identity as a genuinely regional destination brewery while growing its contract brewing and co-packing capabilities to include clients across beverages beyond beer. His survival through the economic cycles that have closed many of his contemporaries reflects a commercial discipline that is rarely discussed alongside the creative reputation.

30. Tash Holgate

Holgate Brewhouse

Tash Holgate is the Co-Founder of Holgate Brewhouse and the operational and hospitality architect of a business that is as much a destination experience as it is a brewing operation. The Holgate model of combining a production brewery with accommodation and dining above it is directly attributable to her vision of what an integrated craft destination could look like, and its sustained performance over more than two decades reflects the quality of execution on the hospitality side of the business.

Her contribution is in demonstrating that a craft brewery's most enduring competitive advantage in a regional market is the quality of the total experience it offers, not only the quality of its beer. Holgate Brewhouse attracts visitors specifically to Woodend and the Macedon Ranges, contributing to regional Victorian tourism in a way that makes the business more resilient to the fluctuating wholesale and retail pressures that have challenged purely production-focused independent breweries.

31. Chuck Hahn

Chuck & Son's Brewing Co

Chuck Hahn is a Co-Founder of Chuck & Son's Brewing Co and one of the most historically significant figures in Australian brewing, with a career spanning Malt Shovel Brewery and the Hahn brand, which became one of Australia's most recognised beer names. In December 2025, he launched Daughter, a new independent beer brand developed in collaboration with his daughter-in-law and Co-Founder Amy Malpass Hahn, marking a return to independent brewing.

His contribution spans four decades of Australian brewing history. His foundational work in Australian craft and mainstream brewing shaped the commercial template for what an independent Australian brewery could achieve in the national market. His return to independent brewing with Chuck & Son's, built around a family partnership rather than institutional backing, reflects a sustained commitment to the independent sector that his commercial success elsewhere did not diminish.

32. Amy Malpass Hahn

Chuck & Son's Brewing Co

Amy Malpass Hahn is a Co-Founder of Chuck & Son's Brewing Co and the generational connector in a family brewing story whose latest chapter launched in late 2025. The Daughter brand she and Chuck Hahn co-developed together reflects a conscious intention to build something that bridges brewing heritage and contemporary commercial thinking, and her involvement in the founding represents the kind of next-generation succession story that the Australian independent brewing sector rarely sees told as explicitly as the brand name itself announces.

Her contribution as a leader is in bringing contemporary marketing instincts and commercial perspective to a venture with a Co-Founder whose reputation in Australian brewing history is among the most established in the country. The combination of deep historical credibility and fresh commercial energy is exactly the dynamic that the best family brewery transitions require to remain relevant rather than merely respected.

33. Ben Kraus

Bridge Road Brewers

Ben Kraus is the Founder of Bridge Road Brewers in Beechworth, Victoria, a brewery he established in the high country of north-east Victoria where he has spent more than two decades building one of the most respected regional brewing operations in Australia. At the 2025 Australian International Beer Awards, Bridge Road's Free Time Raspberry Sour won the Best Non-Alcohol Beer award, a result that reflects the brewery's willingness to invest in categories that were genuinely difficult technically rather than simply commercially attractive.

His contribution is in both the beer and the place. Bridge Road's position in Beechworth as a destination brewery in a wine region has shaped the High Country food and drink tourism experience in a way that is commercially important to the region and the brewery alike. His sustained focus on brewing with local and regional ingredients, and on innovation in styles including non-alcoholic beer, natural beer, and local hop varieties, has made Bridge Road one of the more creatively ambitious independent brewing operations in Victoria.

34. Renn Blackman

Blackman's Brewery

Renn Blackman is a Co-Founder of Blackman's Brewery in Torquay on Victoria's Surf Coast, the family brewery built into one of the most respected regional operations in the state. The Crafty Pint Podcast opened its 2026 programming with a conversation at Blackman's, a recognition of the brewery's standing within the Australian craft beer community. The brewery's approach, focused on community, family, and growing at a considered pace, is a conscious contrast to the growth-at-any-cost model that has caused difficulties for many of its contemporaries.

Blackman's Brewery models a sustainable path to brewery longevity that prioritises community connection over scale. In a year when many Victorian breweries have faced serious structural pressure, the brewery has continued to grow its reputation and its relationship with the Surf Coast community without the capital-driven expansion that makes growth stories easier to tell but harder to sustain. The clarity about why the brewery exists and for whom it brews makes Blackman's one of the more articulate examples in the independent brewing community of what it actually means to build a business that lasts.

35. Jayne Lewis

Melbourne Royal

Jayne Lewis is a Strategy Specialist at Melbourne Royal, the organisation that manages the Australian International Beer Awards, the largest annual beer competition in the world. She is also one of the most historically significant figures in Australian women's brewing leadership: a co-founder of Australia's first female-owned brewery Two Birds Brewing, the founder of the Australian chapter of the Pink Boots Society, and a co-founder of the industry advocacy group Drinks Agents for Change in 2020. In 2022, Beer and Brewer magazine recognised her with a Lifetime Achievement Award.

Her contribution spans a career in which she has shaped both the product culture and the people culture of Australian brewing. The Pink Boots Society's Australian chapter, which she founded, created the support network that has enabled hundreds of women to enter, remain, and advance in an industry that was historically very male-dominated. Her role at Melbourne Royal, working on the strategy of the organisation that runs the AIBA, gives her continued influence over the quality standards and competitive framework of the whole sector.

Category Five: Western Australia

Western Australia has developed one of the most vibrant state-level craft beer cultures in the country, built by a community of independent operators who have developed a distinct commercial and creative identity within a market separated from the east coast by geography and culture alike.

36. John Hoedemaker

Good Drinks Australia / Gage Roads Brew Co

John Hoedemaker is the Managing Director and Co-Founder of Gage Roads Brew Co and its parent company Good Drinks Australia. He co-founded Gage Roads with his brother Bill in Palmyra, Western Australia in 2002, building the brewery from salvaged secondhand equipment in a former margarine factory into a business that surpassed 10 million litres of beer produced in a single year for the first time in 2025, its 20th anniversary year. Gage Roads holds approximately 25 percent of the craft beer market in Western Australia and is Australia's fourth largest brewery.

His contribution is in building scale from genuine independence, a path that required Gage Roads to buy back shares from Woolworths in 2018 to reclaim its ASX-listed independent status. His model for growth, grounded in operational discipline and a consistent focus on distribution, volume, and margin, is one of the more commercially instructive examples in Australian independent brewing. His ongoing inclusion in the Business News Western Australia Power 500 across consecutive years reflects his standing as one of the most consequential independent brewery leaders in the country.

37. Aaron Heary

Gage Roads Brew Co

Aaron Heary is the Executive Director of Strategy, Brand, and Hospitality at Gage Roads Brew Co, a role he has held since joining as a founding employee in 2004. Alongside John Hoedemaker, he has been one of the two central figures in building Gage Roads from its margarine-factory origins into a nationally distributed craft brand over more than two decades. His responsibilities span the commercial identity of the brewery, its hospitality operations, and the strategic direction of the Good Drinks brand portfolio.

His specific contribution is in the brand architecture that has allowed Gage Roads to maintain a genuinely coastal West Australian identity while scaling nationally. Gage Roads' consistent presence in Australia's top-selling craft beers, including a podium finish at the 2025 GABS Hottest 100 for its core range, reflects the quality and brand discipline that Heary has helped sustain over two decades of significant growth and structural change. His longevity in a co-founder-adjacent role reflects the kind of leadership continuity that the most enduring independent breweries tend to require.

38. Bev McKee

King Road Brewing Co

Bev McKee is a Co-owner of King Road Brewing Co, the family-run brewery south of Perth in Western Australia that claimed Champion Small Australian Brewery and Champion Independent Australian Brewery at the 2026 Australian International Beer Awards, adding to a trophy cabinet that has accumulated hardware at major competitions for several consecutive years. King Road also won Champion Beer at the 2026 Perth Royal Food Awards Beer competition. The Crafty Pint described the McKees as still seeming as amazed by their success as they were upon lifting their first AIBA trophy, a quality that reflects a genuinely craft-first approach to the business.

Her contribution is in building a small regional brewery into one of the most consistently recognised independent operations in the country. At a time when many small WA breweries face the structural challenge of limited reach beyond the state, King Road's national awards recognition has built a profile that extends well beyond its immediate geography, making it a reference point for quality in Australian craft brewing as well as a successful local operation.

39. Dave McKee

King Road Brewing Co

Dave McKee is a Co-owner of King Road Brewing Co and the other half of the McKee family partnership that has built one of the most awarded small breweries in Australia. King Road's trophy haul at the 2026 AIBA included Champion Small Brewery, Champion Independent Australian Brewery, and Best Traditional IPA for its NZ Cold IPA, the last of which also reflects the influence of New Zealand hop culture on the most creative work happening in Western Australian craft beer.

His contribution is in the brewing and operational discipline of a business whose commercial reputation has been built entirely on the quality of what it produces rather than on scale, marketing investment, or distribution muscle. The NZ Cold IPA trophy for a Western Australian brewery brewing a New Zealand-influenced style reflects both the regional creativity in WA's beer culture and the willingness to study the best brewing happening anywhere in the Tasman region and apply it at home with local conviction.

40. Jason Bathgate

New Nelson Venture, New Zealand

Jason Bathgate is one of New Zealand's most decorated independent brewers, previously of McLeod's Brewery in Northland, where he accumulated a significant awards record over many years. In 2025 he and Monica Mead relocated from Northland to Nelson, the heartland of New Zealand's hop growing region, to start a new brewing venture. That move was described by NZ beer writer Michael Donaldson as "a huge risk" that drew immediate attention from the New Zealand beer community.

His contribution to New Zealand brewing is in the technical and creative brewing reputation he built at McLeod's over many years, and in the courage of starting again in a new region at a stage of a career when consolidation would have been the easier choice. His relocation to Nelson, home to Clayton Hops and a cluster of New Zealand's most innovative smaller breweries, signals an intention to be part of the region's next chapter as a global beer destination.

41. Monica Mead

New Nelson Venture, New Zealand

Monica Mead is a Founder and brewer in a new Nelson-based brewing venture alongside Jason Bathgate, having relocated from Northland in 2025. The venture has been watched with genuine anticipation by the New Zealand beer community. The move to Nelson represents not just a geographic change but a commitment to building something new in the region that produces the hops that define much of New Zealand's distinctive brewing character.

The contribution of the co-founded venture to Nelson's brewing scene reflects a broader trend in New Zealand independent brewing where the most interesting new projects are emerging not from Auckland or Wellington but from the regions, driven by founders who have built reputations in established breweries and are now ready to create on their own terms. Nelson's combination of hop heritage and growing beer tourism infrastructure makes it one of the more compelling locations for a new independent brewery to plant its flag.

Category Six: New Zealand Craft Leaders

New Zealand's craft brewing scene has produced internationally recognised breweries at a rate that belies the country's small population. The leaders in this category have built some of the most respected operations in the Southern Hemisphere and continue to push the quality ceiling of what ANZ brewing can achieve.

42. Jos Ruffell

Garage Project

Jos Ruffell is a Co-Founder of Garage Project, the Wellington brewery he co-founded with Pete Gillespie and Ian Gillespie in 2011 in an abandoned petrol station in Aro Valley. His background before Garage Project included senior business development roles in the video games industry, and it is that commercial and strategic thinking that has shaped how Garage Project grew from a nano-brewery producing 50 litres at a time into a multi-site operation with international distribution. The brewery won Champion New Zealand Large Brewery at the 2025 New Zealand Beer Awards and claimed New Zealand's first ever gold medal at the World Beer Cup in 2026.

His contribution is in building the commercial and strategic infrastructure that allows a brewery whose identity is defined by creative risk to remain financially sustainable while taking those risks at scale. His public advocacy for packaging innovation through the Again Again reusable packaging initiative reflects a view of brewery leadership that extends beyond beer into the systems that surround it. His combination of business acumen and genuine passion for craft is one of the more distinctive leadership profiles in New Zealand business.

43. Pete Gillespie

Garage Project

Pete Gillespie is a Co-Founder and Head Brewer of Garage Project, the brewer whose technical vision has been behind more than 300 distinct Garage Project releases since the brewery's 2011 founding. After decades of experience in breweries across the United Kingdom and Australia, including a position at Malt Shovel Brewery in Sydney, he returned to Wellington to co-found Garage Project as a deliberate act of creative ambition. The 24/24 founding project, releasing 24 different beers in 24 weeks, established the creative culture from which every subsequent Garage Project release has followed.

His specific contribution is as the technical architect of a body of brewing work that placed New Zealand on the world beer map in a way that no individual brewer had done before. The 2026 World Beer Cup gold medal for Engeltjes Pis, a sour red ale, was New Zealand's first ever gold in the competition, and the silver for Chance Luck and Magic in the same competition confirmed that the creative ambition has been matched by consistently world-class execution.

44. Matt Smith

Brave Brewing Co

Matt Smith is a Co-Founder of Brave Brewing Co in Hastings, Hawke's Bay, the brewery he built with Gemma Smith from a farmers' market stall in 2013 into the 2025 Champion New Zealand Brewing Company. At the 2025 New Zealand Beer Awards, Brave collected five trophies including the overall champion title, Champion Small Brewery, and three individual beer category wins for Tigermilk IPA, Stay Gold XPA, and True Blue West Coast Pilsner, the first time in 18 years a single brewery had claimed three beer category trophies at the awards.

His contribution to New Zealand brewing is in the patient, quality-first growth model that he and Gemma Smith have built in a region that is deeply loyal to its producers but which does not carry the automatic national profile of Auckland or Wellington. His description of the team's "hyper-focused" approach to "the little details" and "incremental steps towards brewing the best possible beer" is the plainest explanation of how a regional New Zealand brewery earns national and international recognition without compromising its roots.

45. Gemma Smith

Brave Brewing Co

Gemma Smith is a Co-Founder of Brave Brewing Co and, alongside Matt Smith, one of the two people at the centre of Hawke's Bay's most celebrated brewing story. The brewery she and Matt have grown from a farmers' market operation into a trophy cabinet full of national awards represents the kind of long-term, community-anchored growth that the best independent brewing businesses in New Zealand are built on.

Her contribution is in the operational and community side of a business whose identity is as much about Hawke's Bay as it is about beer. Brave is deeply embedded in the regional food and hospitality scene, and the brewery's connection to its local community is as much a part of the business model as the quality of the product. Her presence at the centre of one of New Zealand's most decorated independent brewing operations is one of the stronger examples in the sector of how co-founder leadership built on genuine partnership produces sustained results.

46. Richard Emerson

Emerson's Brewery

Richard Emerson is the Owner and Master Brewer of Emerson's Brewery in Dunedin, which he founded in 1992 with backing from his parents and a group of family friends. He is widely credited with changing the way craft beer was perceived in New Zealand in the early 1990s, pushing true-to-style, flavour-driven beers at a time when small breweries were largely producing small-scale versions of mainstream lagers. He is the only brewer in New Zealand to be the subject of his own biography, The Hopfather, published by Penguin Random House in 2019. Born profoundly deaf after his mother contracted Rubella during pregnancy, he is recognised as much for the personal resilience behind his professional story as for the beers themselves.

His specific contribution is foundational. The flavour culture in New Zealand craft beer, the expectation that a small brewery should produce beers with genuine style fidelity and character, is directly traceable to the standards Richard Emerson established in Dunedin in the early 1990s. He sold Emerson's to Lion in 2012 and remained with the brewery, giving credence and authenticity to the brand through its transition to corporate ownership and continuing to represent the values and brewing philosophy that made Emerson's worth acquiring in the first place.

47. Tracy Banner

Sprig & Fern Brewery

Tracy Banner is the Owner and Master Brewer of Sprig & Fern Brewery in Richmond, Nelson, which she founded with her husband Ken in 2005. With more than 40 years in the brewing industry, including positions at Greenalls and Bass in the United Kingdom before moving to New Zealand in 1994, she is one of the most experienced brewers in the country. She was the first female head brewer at Speight's, and at Mac's Brewery she brewed what is recognised as the first fresh hop beer in New Zealand's history.

Her specific contribution is in building Sprig and Fern into a 14-venue network of individually owned taverns across Nelson, Tasman, Wellington, and Christchurch, a model that distributes brewery-quality beer through community-owned hospitality venues in a way that no other New Zealand craft brewery has replicated at scale. She is also an internationally respected beer judge, one of the most experienced active judges in the Southern Hemisphere, and her Instagram presence under the handle @mamabeernz reflects an ongoing engagement with the brewing community that reaches beyond the Nelson region.

48. Eliott Menzies

Altitude Brewing

Eliott Menzies is the Founder and Director of Altitude Brewing in Queenstown, the brewery he founded in 2013 on the shores of Lake Wakatipu before building one of the most scenically situated brewery taprooms in the world. In 2025, Altitude was named Champion New Zealand Medium Brewery at the New Zealand Beer Awards and Champion Small International Brewery at the Australian International Beer Awards, with trophy wins for the Remarks Hazy IPA and the Powder Day NZ Pilsner. Altitude had previously won Champion Small Brewery at the 2021 NZBA, marking a sustained track record of competitive performance.

The founding ethos of being on "a mission to make the best beer in our region" has extended well beyond Queenstown's borders. The brewery's deliberate approach to growth, built on organic reinvestment and a quality-first production philosophy, has protected its identity as a genuine craft operation. The 2025 awards results placed Altitude in the national and international conversation in a way that should ensure the next decade of building at Frankton Marina includes more of the same.

49. Scott McCashin

McCashin's Brewery

Scott McCashin is the owner of McCashin's Brewery in Nelson, the operation behind the Stoke brand and a facility that produces between seven and eight million litres of beer per year, making it one of the highest-volume independent production sites in New Zealand. He is the son of Mac's Brewing founders Terry and Beverley McCashin, and his ownership of the original McCashin's site connects the current generation of independent New Zealand brewing to the family that helped establish it as a commercial proposition.

His contribution is in maintaining and growing the production infrastructure at a site that now brews for multiple brands including Wakachangi alongside the Stoke range. The McCashin's facility is one of the few genuine mid-scale independent production breweries in New Zealand capable of supporting owned brands and contract clients at volume, a role that makes it structurally important to the wider NZ craft scene beyond what its own brands represent in the market.

50. Tim Condon

Social Drinks Group / White Bay Brewery

Tim Condon is a Co-Founder of White Bay Brewery and a founding partner in Social Drinks Group, the merged entity that brought together Melbourne's Hawkers Beer and Sydney's White Bay Brewery in February 2025. White Bay, which he co-founded with Adam Trippe-Smith in 2020 in the Sydney suburb of White Bay, became one of the few new craft breweries to achieve national recognition within its first four years of operation, building a reputation for craft lagers alongside a broader range that earned it the designation of official beer partner of the Sydney Swans in 2024.

His contribution is in the founding partnership behind one of the more interesting structural experiments in Australian independent brewing, a two-city merger of complementary brands that opted to stay independent together rather than seek external capital or accept acquisition. His background as a publican, combined with Trippe-Smith's distribution infrastructure at Konvoy, gave Social Drinks Group from its founding a practical understanding of both ends of the beer market that purely brewery-side founders often lack.

Notable Voices We Almost Included

The ANZ brewing community includes many leaders who came close to this list and whose work is equally worth following.

Topher Boehm co-founded Wildflower Brewing and Blending in Marrickville in 2016, building one of the most distinctive wild fermentation and mixed-culture brewing operations in the Southern Hemisphere before announcing the closure of the Marrickville venue in May 2026. He intends to reboot the Wildflower brand in a wine region at a future date, and his decade of advocacy for sustainable agriculture, native ingredients, and genuinely experimental beer culture has left a mark on Australian craft beer that will outlast the physical space.

Mazen Hajjar co-founded Hawkers Beer in Melbourne in 2015 and built it into one of the most significant and outspoken independent craft breweries in Australia over the following decade. His public commentary on excise tax, tap contracts, and the structural disadvantages facing independent breweries shaped the national policy conversation. He relocated to Dubai following the 2025 Hawkers and White Bay merger and is no longer based in the ANZ brewing sector.

Phil Sexton is credited as the founder of what is considered Australia's first craft brewery in the modern sense, Matilda Bay Brewing, co-founded in Western Australia in 1983. His influence on the commercial template for Australian craft brewing extends across 40 years of industry history and several subsequent ventures.

David Cryer spent more than three decades at the centre of the Australian and New Zealand beer industries in roles spanning operations, education, and community leadership, and announced his retirement in 2025. His departure from active industry roles was recognised across both markets as the end of a genuinely formative chapter in ANZ brewing history.

Common Mistakes to Avoid When Engaging with Brewing Leadership

Understanding the ANZ brewing sector means understanding its structural complexity. Several errors appear consistently in how people outside the industry think about it.

The first is conflating market share with leadership quality. The two largest brewing groups in Australia, Asahi Beverages and Lion, together hold approximately 80 percent of the Australian beer market, and the two largest in New Zealand, Lion NZ and DB Breweries, together hold approximately 56 percent of the New Zealand market. This concentration means that the most commercially significant brewing leaders are not the most visible ones in the craft conversation, and that the most visible craft leaders are operating in a market where they represent a fraction of total volume. Both things are true simultaneously, and understanding both is necessary for a complete picture of ANZ brewing leadership.

The second is treating sustainability commitments as marketing rather than as genuine operational priorities. Sawmill Brewery's six consecutive sustainability award wins at the New Zealand Beer Awards are the product of specific capital investments in water recovery, solar energy, wastewater treatment, and CO2 recapture. Lion ANZ's B Corporation certification in 2025 required systematic auditing across governance, workforce, community, customers, and environment. These are management decisions with genuine cost and operational implications, not branding exercises.

The third is underestimating the significance of the non-alcoholic category. Non-alcoholic beer representing approximately 10 percent of overall beer sales in Australia is a structural shift in consumer behaviour that Heaps Normal and others have spent years building the commercial and technical infrastructure to serve. The launch of Australia's first commercially available non-alcoholic draught beer in January 2026 was the product of years of technical development, not a novelty response to a trend.

The fourth is failing to appreciate the geographic diversity of where ANZ brewing leadership is actually located. Some of the most consequential brewing businesses on the list operate not from Sydney or Melbourne or Auckland but from the Katoomba Blue Mountains, Beechworth in the Victorian High Country, Bathurst in regional New South Wales, Hastings in Hawke's Bay, and Queenstown's Frankton Marina. The decentralisation of brewing quality away from the major cities is one of the most significant structural developments in ANZ brewing in the last decade.

Implementation Guide for Leaders Working in or with the Brewing Sector

The brewing industry in Australia and New Zealand is one of the more instructive environments for studying the full range of leadership challenges in a single sector. Its mix of multinational corporate governance, founder-led small business, activist advocacy, craft creative identity, and manufacturing operational demands is unusually rich.

For executives in corporate brewing, the most pressing leadership challenge in 2026 is managing the tension between the cost discipline required by shareholders and the quality and community investments that sustain long-term brand relevance in a market where consumers can now choose from hundreds of independently owned alternatives. Amanda Sellers at Asahi and Anubha Sahasrabuddhe at Lion are navigating that tension in public, and their decisions about brand investment, team culture, and sustainability commitments are among the more visible examples of corporate leadership under sustained scrutiny.

For independent craft founders, the central leadership challenge is building the financial resilience to outlast the next cycle of excise increases, rising input costs, and consumer spending pressures without compromising the identity that made the brewery worth building in the first place. The businesses on this list that have navigated those cycles most successfully share a pattern: deep community roots, product quality that earns loyalty rather than just attention, and financial discipline that does not require external capital to sustain growth.

For industry body leaders like Kylie Lethbridge at the IBA and Melanie Kees at the Brewers Guild of NZ, the challenge is building coalitions across a diverse membership and using those coalitions to influence policy and commercial conditions in ways that actually move the dial rather than simply documenting the problem.

For emerging leaders in ANZ brewing, the clearest lesson from the leaders profiled here is that longevity in this industry requires both technical excellence and commercial honesty. The breweries that have lasted for more than 20 years across the list, from Holgate in Woodend to Sprig and Fern in Nelson to Gage Roads in Perth, built their endurance on both.

Organisations in the food, beverage, and hospitality sectors that want to build stronger leadership cultures, improve team communication, and navigate the people dynamics that come with commercial growth can engage Jonno White, author of Step Up or Step Out (10,000+ copies sold) and Certified Working Genius Facilitator, for keynotes, Working Genius workshops, leadership coaching, or executive team facilitation. International travel is often far more affordable than organisations expect. Many organisations find that flying Jonno in costs less than engaging high-profile local providers. Email jonno@consultclarity.org.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who are the most influential leaders in brewing in Australia and New Zealand in 2026?

The most influential leaders in ANZ brewing in 2026 span corporate executives, independent craft founders, and industry body leaders. Amanda Sellers as Group CEO of Asahi Beverages APAC and Anubha Sahasrabuddhe as CEO of Lion ANZ lead the two largest brewing groups operating across both markets. Kylie Lethbridge as CEO of the Independent Brewers Association is the most prominent advocate for the independent sector. Among craft founders, DJ McCready of Mountain Culture, Jos Ruffell and Pete Gillespie of Garage Project, and Matt and Gemma Smith of Brave Brewing Co are among those with the highest current profile.

What is the difference between corporate brewing leadership and craft brewing leadership in ANZ?

Corporate brewing leadership in ANZ operates within multinational ownership structures, managing brands that collectively account for the majority of beer consumed in both countries. The challenge is sustaining commercial scale, managing regulatory and sustainability obligations, and maintaining brand relevance in a market where consumers have growing craft alternatives. Craft brewing leadership is typically founder-led, with the founder directly involved in both product and commercial decisions, facing the specific challenge of building financial resilience without external capital while competing against organisations with vastly greater distribution and marketing resources.

How does the ANZ craft beer market differ from the United States or the United Kingdom?

The ANZ craft beer market operates within a different regulatory and market structure from either the US or the UK. Australia's beer excise system indexes increases to the Consumer Price Index twice per year, creating a structural cost pressure on producers that US and many European brewers do not face at the same rate. Australia's tap contract arrangements, which many in the independent sector argue lock the majority of draught taps to the two dominant multinational groups, represent a market access challenge with no direct parallel in markets where tap access is more open. New Zealand's market is significantly smaller and more concentrated, while the craft scene has produced internationally recognised quality at a per-capita rate that few countries match.

What makes Australia and New Zealand's brewing scene distinctive globally?

The ANZ brewing scene is globally distinctive for several reasons. New Zealand's unique hop varieties, particularly Nelson Sauvin, Motueka, and the more recent Nectaron, have become sought-after ingredients for breweries around the world and have given the country's craft brewing a genuine terroir identity. Australia's independent sector is characterised by a combination of craft quality and commercial ambition that has produced some of the Southern Hemisphere's most awarded breweries. The non-alcoholic beer category in Australia is among the most commercially developed in the world, driven by breweries including Heaps Normal that have treated it as a genuine technical and creative challenge rather than a compromise product.

Final Thoughts

The 50 leaders on this list share one quality above all others: they are building things that will last longer than the conditions that made building them difficult. The brewing industry across Australia and New Zealand in 2026 is navigating genuine structural challenges, including cost pressures, policy environments, consumer behaviour shifts, and market access dynamics that would have closed many of these businesses if their founders were building purely on momentum rather than on the deeper qualities that make a brewing operation genuinely worth following.

The corporate executives on this list are showing what responsible stewardship of large, complex businesses looks like at a moment when the relationship between commercial scale and community trust is under scrutiny across every major beverage category. The craft founders are showing what it looks like to build something authentic in a market that increasingly rewards authenticity with commercial results. The industry body leaders are doing the quiet, unglamorous, essential work of fighting for the conditions in which everyone on this list can keep doing what they do.

Bring Jonno White, author of Step Up or Step Out (10,000+ copies sold), Certified Working Genius Facilitator, and host of The Leadership Conversations Podcast (240+ episodes, 150+ countries), to facilitate a leadership workshop, Working Genius session, or executive offsite for your food, beverage, or hospitality team. Email jonno@consultclarity.org. International travel is often far more affordable than organisations expect.

About the Author

Jonno White is a Certified Working Genius Facilitator, author of Step Up or Step Out, and leadership consultant who has worked with schools, corporates, and nonprofits around the world. His book Step Up or Step Out has sold over 10,000 copies globally, and his podcast The Leadership Conversations has featured 240+ episodes reaching listeners in 150+ countries. Jonno founded The 7 Questions Movement with 6,000+ participating leaders and achieved a 93.75% satisfaction rating for his Working Genius masterclass at the ASBA 2025 National Conference. Based in Brisbane, Australia, Jonno works globally and regularly travels for speaking and facilitation engagements. Organisations consistently find that international travel is far more affordable than expected. To book Jonno for your next keynote, workshop, or facilitation session, email jonno@consultclarity.org.

Sources

Australian beer market data: accio.com, Statista. New Zealand brewing industry economic contribution: Brewers Guild of New Zealand. IBA independent brewery sector data: Independent Brewers Association (Kylie Lethbridge, February 2025). GABS Hottest 100 results: gabs.com.au. New Zealand Beer Awards 2025 results: brewersguild.org.nz. Australian International Beer Awards 2026 results: melbourneroyal.com.au. Better Beer sales figures: foodmag.com.au. Good Drinks Australia volume milestone: beerandbrewer.com. World Beer Cup 2026 results: brewersassociation.org. Guinness Australia sales surge: travelwhilenerdy.com.

Next Read

The ANZ brewing industry sits at the intersection of food manufacturing, consumer behaviour, and commercial leadership in ways directly relevant to the broader questions facing executives across the food and beverage sector. For more on what leadership looks like across the food and consumer products sector, the directory of influential leaders in food consumer products covers the most important voices in adjacent categories.

Keep reading: influential leaders in food consumer products