After over 130 years of brewing, the famous Tui brewery in Mangatainoka, Tararua, has stopped its beer production.
DB Breweries, which owns Tui, made the decision to close the main production plant in 2015 but kept a modern brewery to continue providing specialty beers for its taproom and the local community.
Recently, however, DB Breweries’ Marketing Director, Fraser Shrimpton, confirmed that brewing at Mangatainoka had completely stopped three years ago. The COVID-19 pandemic restrictions in 2020 and 2021 prevented DB from running the brewery, prompting them to move production to their Timaru and Auckland facilities in 2021.
“We are currently in the process of redeploying the brewing equipment to our other sites across the country,” Shrimpton said.
DB has also announced that it has ended brewery tours at its Tui headquarters in Mangatainoka and will offer visitors a beer tasting experience instead, sampling a variety of beer styles. While beer will no longer be produced in the said town, the company says it will remain the “spiritual home of Tui.”
“We will continue to welcome visitors to enjoy a tasty brew at the Tui HQ café and bar, walk around the beautiful grounds, and check out the iconic brewery tower that we had earthquake-strengthened,” Shrimpton explained.
Tui’s rich 130-year history also includes the closure of other regional breweries. In 2001, DB announced plans to close the Greymouth facility and move production to Auckland. This decision faced public backlash, leading to a swift reversal where DB agreed to continue brewing some of the range in the West Coast town. The production continued for almost two decades, and in 2020, DB ultimately moved all remaining operations from the brewery to Timaru and Auckland.
Lincoln University professor and New Zealand beer historian Greg Ryan noted that the recent closure is unlikely to spark the same level of public outcry as when DB closed its brewery in Greymouth.
“The obvious parallel is what happened 25 years ago when they decided they weren’t going to brew Monteith’s on the coast anymore,” he said. “There was a real outcry from the coast about tradition, but I didn’t sense the same reaction in 2015 when it was announced that Tui would be brewed elsewhere.”
Ryan believes that Tui did not seem to have the same bond to location, possibly because of its popular “Yeah, Right” advertising campaign during the late 1990s and early 2000s, along with its strong ties to student culture. This may have made Tui more of a national identity than one specifically associated with its original Mangatainoka home.