👉 Background: Billson's Brewery started back in 1865 and is one of the oldest continuing beverage manufacturers in Australia. In 2017, the company was taken over by new owners and in the years after, business was boomin’, thanks to its canned vodka-based ready-to-drink alcohol products.

👉 What happened: This year, things started to become real tough for Billson's after experiencing a slowdown in demand and also chunky increases in the government excise for alcohol.

👉 What else: Now, Billson’s Beverages has been put into administration after it encountered a triple whammy of negative factors that ultimately brought on its demise.

What's the key learning?

💡When a company is in the wrong place at the wrong time, survival can be very challenging.

💡For small and medium sized businesses, weathering one challenge at a time can be hard, but Billson’s faced three:

1. Cost-of-living pressures impacting all consumer-facing companies, which has brought down sales for non-essential products — like alcohol
2. Billson's struggled to manage its costs as it scaled up its production over the past few years
3. There have been big increases in the excise paid to the government by alcohol companies

💡Now the company is in the hands of administrators, hoping a sale can be done quick smart to keep this historic brewer alive.