ABC News Article: The worldwide whisky downturn is putting Tasmania's top shelf industry on edge

Keeping spirits high

The challenges that lie ahead aren't front of mind for one of the newest players in Tasmanian whisky, Waubs Harbour.

The distillery, housed in an old oyster hatchery in the east coast town of Bicheno, creates a maritime-inspired whisky.

Started by brothers Tim and Rob Polmear, it began making whisky in 2019 and sold its first bottles three years ago.

The distillery has worked to ramp up production as sales increased, and now produces about 12,000 litres each year.

"But I think people that love a good premium whisky somehow find the dollars, and fortunately for us, we haven't seen much of a downturn.

"Over the last couple of years, we've seen [a] good 30 per cent sales growth."

At a time when others in the industry are downsizing, the brothers are scaling up.

Production is also increasing at Sullivans Cove. Mr Gaunt hopes that trend continues as the local industry tries to grow its worldwide whisky sales rate from the current 0.05 per cent.

"We have about 3.5 per cent volume share of global wine, and it's taken 20, 30-odd years to go there from when we saw new world wines emerge," he said.

"We think with Australia more broadly, that could be up to 2 per cent volume share, which is a considerable increase in whisky that we would be selling and making around the world from today's very small share."