FRI AM News: WisBusiness: the Podcast with Deb Carey, New Glarus Brewing Co.; Talking Trade with Mickeala Carter, FTI Consulting

November 1, 2024

— This week’s episode of “WisBusiness: the Podcast” is with Deb Carey, co-founder and president of New Glarus Brewing Company.

The brewing business, which was founded in 1993 by Deb and her husband and brewmaster Dan, broke ground Tuesday on a $55 million addition to its Hilltop facility in southern Wisconsin. The 65,000-square-foot addition will include hospitality space as well as more brewing capacity and a distilling installation.

Carey says the initial planning process for the expansion began before the pandemic. The company had been lining up contractors right when COVID-19 hit, putting a hold on the project.

“During COVID, we lost 40% of our business overnight, and so coming back from that, the craft industry has really struggled,” Carey said. “There have been years where they’ve been down better than 10%, and I’m very proud to say that we’ve held our own and been steady, but steady isn’t the same as previous growth.”

Now, the project is underway as the company moves to double the facility’s main brew hall with four additional copper kettles, while also adding a distillery for spirits. Distilling is a new venture for the beer company. Dan Carey has been conducting research and development for some time, but “it’ll probably take some years” to begin actual production.

Their daughter, Katherine May, is involved with the project as an architect. Carey said “she’s been at the forefront” of the project the whole way.

“It’s just a remarkable undertaking, she’s really done a remarkable job,” she said, adding: “I’m very, very proud of her.”

Along with quadrupling parking at the Hilltop location and installing electric vehicle charging, the project will also add geothermal heating and cooling for the four-story building. Fifty geothermal wells will be located beneath the new parking lot, according to project details shared by the company. Keller Inc., based in Germantown, has been tapped for construction and project management on the expansion.

Carey also discusses the company’s business model, which only distributes its beers within the state. In the announcement for the expansion, she said the company has no plans to change this approach.

“It’s an incredibly competitive market,” she said. “I think sometimes people miss the point, that we compete on the same stage as international brewers who’ve been around for hundreds of years … When you look at the return on investment for distribution beyond the borders, it just becomes increasingly less profitable.”

Listen to the podcast and see the full list of WisBusiness.com podcasts.

— In the latest episode of “Talking Trade,” consultant Mickeala Carter offers insights on the next U.S. farm bill and ag export trends.

“When you’re thinking about agricultural exports and what that means for our farmers here, a lot of that now is due to U.S. ag output growing faster than domestic demand for a lot of products, and some of those products include those of importance to Wisconsin, like dairy products, meats, vegetables,” said Carter, senior director of government affairs for FTI Consulting.

She attributes a rise in international exports to rising incomes and growing populations in other countries, connectivity through the internet and more. This has come after U.S. exports in 2018 and 2019 had a “bit of a decline” related to retaliatory tariffs enacted by other countries, according to Carter.

“And so today, we’re looking at the bulk of those tariffs, which have been removed, and I think that we’re seeing those numbers climbing back up steadily,” she said.

She said other nations are increasingly interested in U.S. staples, noting exports of cranberries to Colombia have “shot up” in recent years. Wisconsin is the top cranberry-producing state in the country.

“They were getting more top chefs into Colombia, because they’re seeing their tourism go up and people wanting to experience different types of cuisines,” she said. “And I think that as tourism rises in other countries that maybe perhaps in the past weren’t known for their tourism, we’ll see more of this.”

The podcast also explores the potential for the coming federal farm bill, after the previous one was signed into law by then-President Donald Trump in 2018. The bill is typically passed every five years, so “the re-up of this particular farm bill should have been last year,” but a one-year extension delayed legislative progress, Carter explained.

“That year was up in September, and now we have some folks in Congress hoping it can be done during the lame duck session, and you have other folks who are holding out,” she said. “And a lot of it is due to the same age-old fights that happen during every farm bill.”

Carter is scheduled to speak on trade policy during an upcoming Madison International Trade Association event on Nov. 12 in Pewaukee.

Talking Trade is hosted by E.M Wasylik Associates Managing Director Ken Wasylik and M.E. Dey & Co. President and Managing Director Sandi Siegel.

Watch the full episode here.

“Talking Trade” is now available in audio form on Apple Podcasts and Google Podcasts. Subscribe and find more episodes here.

— WARF has launched a new program aimed at providing a faster and more user-friendly licensing experience for startups founded by UW-Madison entrepreneurs.

The new Startup Advantage program includes a discounted royalty rate and “minimal” upfront costs, with a goal of making it easier for UW startups to access WARF’s licensing.

“We aim to make our process and agreements transparent and more startup friendly,” WARF Senior Director of Intellectual Property and Licensing Jeanine Burmania said in a statement. “Our hope is to reduce the time and legal processes for startup leaders, helping them avoid some legal expenses and launch more smoothly from campus.”

To date, more than 100 faculty and graduate students have worked directly with the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation in licensing the technologies resulting from research in their labs, leading to business creation.

See more at Madison Startups.

— In a recent UW-Madison study, a strain of bird flu that infected a dairy worker in Texas earlier this year killed all of the ferrets it was tested on, the university announced.

Prof. Yoshihiro Kawaoka, who led the research published this week in the journal Nature, says “this is one of the most pathogenic viruses I’ve ever seen in ferrets.”

The release notes this strain of the H5N1 avian influenza virus doesn’t seem to have continued spreading, though researchers are still exploring what its lethality in ferrets could mean for potential human infections.

Mutations in viruses allow them to jump between species, and Kawaoka says the flu virus likely “took two paths” when it spread from birds to cows, making it better at infecting mammals. One of these paths led to the “more concerning” mutation that was found in the person in Texas who was infected, but the other led to a less dangerous mutation.

“Both mutations give the virus the ability to adapt to mammals, but the good thing is the one containing this more pathogenic mutation has not been detected again,” Kawaoka said in the release. “So there are no extremely pathogenic H5N1 viruses currently circulating in cows. However, if a currently circulating cow H5N1 virus acquires that mutation, then that would be an issue.”

The USDA on Wednesday announced it would expand testing and monitoring for bird flu in dairy animals, including collecting milk samples to support states’ efforts to limit the risk to exposed farm workers. Earlier this year, the agency also created a requirement to test cattle before moving them between states.

Over the past month or so, the number of states detecting bird flu in dairy herds has fallen from 14 to two, the release shows. But the USDA this week also announced the country’s first detected case of bird flu in a pig, found on a farm in Oregon.

See the release.

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