Moa Brewing is a New Zealand brewery owned by Mallbeca Limited. It was founded in 2003 in Blenheim by Josh Scott and had its initial public offering in 2012. The company became infamous for its advertising campaigns that portrayed beer as “the domain of aspiring wealthy men.” It has not been profitable since 2012 and was subsequently sold to Mallbeca in 2021. An industry commentator estimated that the sale price would barely cover the physical assets of the Moa brewery, meaning that the new owners valued the Moa brand at “essentially nothing”.
Moa Brewing was founded in Blenheim in 2003 by Josh Scott, the son of winemaker Allan Scott. Initially, the company was 50/50 owned by Josh and Allan.
In August or September 2010, two business incubators acquired the company and together acquired 70 percent. This included The Business Bakery, an investment company founded by Jeff Ross.
Moa soon faced criticism for advertising that suggested low-carb beers were only for “weirdos.” This included printing T-shirts with the slogan “Low Carb Beer” but with a pink Q over the B. Josh Scott, the director at the time, said he had no idea about the planned campaign and only learned about it when he saw posts about it on the Internet. [4] Moa acknowledged the criticism but did not remove the Facebook ad, and a year later published photos of employees wearing the T-shirts.
At some point, founder Josh Scott sold the company to Jeff Ross, who took Moa public and turned it into a public company. In 2012, Moa held an initial public offering, which was oversubscribed; after the IPO, Moa was valued at NZ$38 million.
The shareholder prospectus for the IPO itself was controversial because it presented a Mad Men-like image, with photos of company directors dressed in suits next to models in white blouses and short skirts, tips on achieving “moments of modern manhood,” advertisements for “masculine” companies such as Beretta rifles and Aston Martins, and a nude woman on a white horse advertising candles sold by then-Moa CEO Jeff Ross. The hashtag “#momentsofmanhood” was mocked on social media. Another campaign in 2016 also came under criticism for a proposed ad campaign when a shareholder criticized the depiction of women in a planned video ad.
In a 2018 article for Stuff, journalist Michael Donaldson said: “Moab has always made great beer, there’s no question about that… But in its early years as a public company, Moa resembled the old Peanuts character Pig-Pen, forgettable and shrouded in a dust storm of controversy thanks to its crudely sexist marketing. Now it looks like ancient history, with the brewery, while still bad, adopting a low-key approach that’s more like a hunting-fishing-rambler.”