Colonial Brewery Has Kinda, Not Really Changed Its Name
"I think what we've done is keep a nice middle ground."
Colonial Brewing has announced they’ve changed their name after backlash, but only to an abbreviation.
The independent Western Australian brewery will henceforth be known as CBCo — yes, as in, short for Colonial Brewing Company.
“After extensive consultation with all of our key stakeholders, our customers, and our employees, we’ve decided that we’re going to transition to the new name CBCo Brewing,” said Managing Director Lawrence Dowd in a video on Wednesday.
He said the company didn’t want to come up with a whole new name and “disregard all our past history and where we come from”.
“There’s definitely going to be some people out there that aren’t happy that we are dropping the name,” said Dowd to the ABC. “I think what we’ve done is keep a nice middle ground where we’ve recognised the past by retaining a moniker we’ve always used.”
It comes after a Melbourne bottle-o boycotted the beer brand in 2020 after concerns were publicly raised about its namesake.
“‘Colonial’ is still a problematic word that speaks to a broader history of colonialism and colonisation, which has caused irreversible harm to the First Nations people in Australia and Indigenous populations around the world,” said Blackhearts & Sparrows in a statement at the time.
“While we appreciate that the people behind Colonial Brewing had no malicious intent in their choice of brand name, words have power,” they said.
In response, CBCo acknowledged that ‘colonial’ was a problematic word, and said they understood the “stress and angst [of] the Black Lives Matter community”. However, Dowd had also told Channel 9 that “changing the name wouldn’t stamp out the problem” of racism.
The current owners, who purchased the company in 2008, said consultations with Indigenous Elders were part of their renaming consultation process at the height of the original controversy — however, this was not reiterated two years on.
The beer itself won’t be changing, and it will take up to a year for all mention of ‘colonial’ to be phased out of remaining stock.
Photo Credit: CBCo