Portfolio brand Wings & Arrow, whose brands include Ashland Hard Seltzer, Mucho Aloha Hard Lemonade, Villager Spirits canned cocktails and Wings & Arrow beer, is merging with Eugene, Oregon-based Ninkasi Brewing to form Great Frontier Holdings.
Josh Landan, founder of Wings & Arrow and Saint Archer Brewing, will serve as CEO of Great Frontier, while Ninkasi founders Jamie Floyd and Nikos Ridge will maintain operational and leadership roles within the new company, according to a press release.
The merger would make Great Frontier the third largest independent alcohol producer in the West, when including contract brewing, according to the release.
The combined Great Frontier portfolio “touches almost every canned alcohol segment in the market,” including the growing hard tea market with the launch of Voyage Hard Iced Tea later this summer. Combined with its co-packing business, planned acquisitions and new brand launches, the new company is targeting 250,000 barrels in annual production within the next three years.
In terms of distribution expansion, Great Frontier plans to deepen the footprint of all those products in the West “versus spreading itself thin by placing undue effort on regional expansion,” according to the release. Ninkasi beers are currently distributed in Alaska, Alberta, Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Nevada, Oregon and Washington, as well as Vancouver, British Columbia, while Wings & Arrow products are available across California and few other Western U.S. markets.
“What we’re doing with Great Frontier Holdings has only been done once successfully on an independent scale before, but it is a model proven by the global giants in the alcoholic beverage space,” Landan said in the release. “To make things work in this industry requires a strong independent pipeline for production, great marketing, a diverse portfolio, and either a capital influx or existing profitability. We don’t need to chase capital as we have all of the other criteria in place through this merger to be successful.”
Great Frontier will employ more than 140 people across Ninkasi’s existing Eugene, Oregon restaurant, production facility, other Oregon operations and San Diego-based brand marketing teams, according to the release. No staff reductions are anticipated, with plans to increase the sales support team in the next few months as Great Frontier launches new brands and looks to “acquire other brands with unmet potential.”
“Rather than perpetually raising capital to achieve growth, Great Frontier is taking a different approach by creating a collective of successful, diverse, complementary brands under one roof, backed by a strong production pipeline and exceptional marketing capabilities,” Landan said. “We’re uniquely positioned to grow our existing portfolio in the West, incubate new brands, and potentially acquire others as things progress.”
Landon founded Saint Archer in 2013 and sold it to MillerCoors (Molson Coors) in 2015. The San Diego craft brewery grew from 4,151 barrels in 2013 to 17,222 barrels in 2014, and bumped to its peak of 65,000 barrels in 2019. However, Molson Coors discontinued the brand in 2021 and it was out of market last year.
Landon went on to found Ashland Hard Seltzer, along with several celebrity investors, in 2020, and then merged the brand and his Villager Spirits brand under the Wings and Arrow umbrella in November 2021. Landan compared the approach to that of Boston Beer Company, with a parent company launching new brands in different bev-alc segments, rather than creating line extensions. In April 2022, the company raised $10 million to support production and expand its collection of brands.
Ninkasi Brewing, founded in 2006, ranked as the 43rd largest Brewers Association-defined craft brewery in 2022, with production of 61,250 barrels (-5%), according to the trade group’s May/June edition of the New Brewer Magazine. The Eugene, Oregon-based craft brewery’s output has declined in recent years since peaking at 100,849 barrels in 2015. Those declines accelerated in 2021 with a year-over-year drop of -23% to 64,606 barrels, down from 84,118 barrels the previous year.
Contract brewing has become a big part of the Ninkasi business. The company has just begun brewing for Montucky Cold Snacks to supplement its western markets. Montucky, the single liquid, four-SKU brand produced solely through contract production, posted 63,250 barrels of output in 2022, a +21% increase, according to the BA. The company is targeting 1.4 million cases in 2023.
The merger with Landon’s Wings & Arrow isn’t Ninkasi’s first attempt at a platform. In April 2019, Ninkasi’s founders sold a majority stake of the business to Legacy Breweries. The partnership didn’t last long as Ninkasi founders Ridge and Floyd, along with Nigel Francisco, signed a separation agreement with Legacy about a year later and announced the reacquisition of the controlling interest in May 2021.