Halifax based company, Good Robot Brewing, is opening a new production facility aimed at sharing manufacturing resources among the region’s beverage makers and allowing them to achieve the scale necessary to target international markets.

The company opened in 2015 by Joshua Counsil, Angus Campbell and Doug Kehoe, “Angus came up with this idea of a beverage manufacturing facility with really, really trailblazing and innovative technology,” said Counsil in an interview with Entrevestor.

“And that rather than have every brewery or beverage manufacturer in Atlantic Canada trying to scale up at the same time … we could gain a whole bunch of efficiencies that we could pass on to other beverage manufacturers in Atlantic Canada.”

The new plant, “The Beverage Factory,” will also be suitable for making cider, coffee, sparkling water and coconut milk, among other potential uses. Beverage makers will hire Good Robot to produce and co-pack their beverages under contract. It will house 15,000 square feet of floor space.

To finance the operation of the new plant and scale its workforce, Good Robot is in the process of raising a $500,000 equity funding round, but is eschewing venture capitalists in favour of more traditional private equity shops because feedback from VCs has been that the company is too established to tap early-stage funding.

The Beverage Factory itself was also paid for with the help of loans from “a variety of banks and Crown corporations, both national and provincial.”

Photo courtesy of GOOD ROBOT BREWING/FACEBOOK