Turning your back on the north-east oil and gas industry to try your hand at new career can be seen as a risky move.
But that’s exactly what Dave Grant and David McHardy wanted to do.
In the midst of the 2014 oil and gas downturn, the pair turned to brewing beer.
Now 10 years later they head up one of Scotland’s most well-known craft brands – Fierce Beer.
With a turnover of more than £5 million, neither regrets the bold move.
‘Lots of people unhappy in oil and gas’
Mr Grant had worked in oil and gas for nearly 25 years in a career that saw him based in Aberdeen, Houston and Africa.
Latterly he was a director for Expro, but with more signs of unrest in the oil and gas sector, he knew it was time for a change.
Mr Grant, 57, said: “There were always cycles in the oilfield and I went through many cycles of boom or bust.
“At the time there was an awful lot of time spent paying off people I worked with.
“Things were really tough. There was no reason for either me or Dave to leave.
“We weren’t getting made redundant or paid off ourselves. We both came to the conclusion that the fun had gone to a certain extent.
“It was lovely taking a big wage and it was still a great job to have. We were both grateful to have what we did.
“But we fancied doing something different.
“There were a lot of people becoming less happy being in oil and gas and moving on to different things.”
Change of direction
Mr Grant was already brewing in his own home having had a passion for beer and was trading under the name of Fierce.
He said: “I was fed up of the beers that were available at pubs.
“I would hang around in BrewDog bars and then Six Degrees and Cask opened.
“It was useful spending time in them and seeing what was on the market and could be made with far more interesting liquids than the usual suspects.”
Meanwhile, David, 44, had taken a redundancy package from Veripos where he had worked for 12 years as a portfolio manager.
It was in 2015 the guys went into business together after meeting on a brewing course in Sunderland.
Mr McHardy said: “The course in Sunderland was well thought of and not too expensive which helps when you are taking redundancy.
“I had done home brewing and thought if I was going to do something new it should be something I was interested in and enjoyed.
“Everything fell into place.
“The fact they were offering voluntary redundancy showed things were tough at the time during the oil and gas downturn.”
Invested £250,000 to get Fierce Beer up and running
Together they invested £250,000 between them and got funding from small investors.
Mr Grant said: “I could’ve been offered a different and better job with Expro but I decided it was time to call it a day and do something different.
“It was an incredibly brave move. All of our savings disappeared.
“Everyone was super supportive. They knew we were bored and fed up with what we were doing.”
“Our wives were still working so there was still cash coming into the household because we took a 90% pay cut.
“I have no idea why we did it and wouldn’t do it again,” he laughed.
‘Everything fell into place’
In May 2016 Fierce Beer moved into its first premises in Dyce’s Howe Moss Avenue and hired its first member of staff only a week later.
Mr Grant said: “Within a few weeks we knew we’d need a second premises if not a third.
“We knew we wanted to make something of it and never expected to stop and just be a tiny producer.
“From the start we knew it was a volume game. But all you can afford at the start is small and pretty basic equipment.
“Our first sale was from Aldi asking for two pallets of beer they needed for a festival in three months.
“Of course I said yes. But our bottle machine could only do a pallet of beer in nine hours. It was so incredibly slow and manual.”
When Fierce Beer, which employs 50 people, first started it was producing 5,000 litres a month but now its volume has increased to 180,000 litres.
Fierce Beer strong presence across north-east
Turnover in the first year was £301,000 rising to just over £5m currently.
Its beer is stocked in supermarkets including Asda, Sainsburys, Tesco, Morrisons, Lidl and Aldi and more than 100 bars across the north-east.
Fierce Beers also has three bars with one in Aberdeen, Edinburgh and Manchester.
Its existing brewery in Dyce’s Howe Moss Terrace, scaling 23,000 sq ft, includes an on-site shop and Fierce Taproom.
In 2021 it launched a crowdfunding campaign and smashed its £100,000 in less than 24 hours with a new target of £150,000 then introduced.
Earlier this year it launched another £100,000 crowdfunder which again pulled in support from the public.
The cash will be used to “go green” by becoming more sustainable, and efficient and slash CO2 emissions.
Fierce Beer’s public support
The pair are incredibly grateful for the support they have received from customers but admit it’s been hard going at times.
Mr Grant said: “Every single day is a tough day.
“Margins and profitability in brewing are incredibly poor compared to virtually anything, but especially the oilfield.
“To be able to survive in general terms in brewing it’s all about the volume produced.
“It’s so lowball you’ve got to produce a lot of volume. Every day is a concern on cash flow.
“Balancing the debt versus profitability and constantly looking will the business to continue to survive well and provide a living for the people we employ. It is a hard one.
“You see many breweries close down because the cost of goods is so expensive and goes up all the time.
“But we can’t increase the cost of our products because people will only pay so much.
“We are very hopeful it will get better in six months when things start to go down again.
“It’s a criminally tough game in brewing.”
Targeting English supermarkets and pubs
Fierce Beer produces a core range of nine products with its best seller currently a Mexican lager with lime called Cerveza.
Looking towards the future the plan is to keep expanding and hopefully see their products in England.
Mr Grant said: “The support up here has been outstanding, especially during Covid.
“Shout-outs go to McGintys Group and Aberdeen Performing Arts who really have helped us a lot.
“We’ve gone from hardly any permanent lines of Fierce to something like between 80 to 100 in the Aberdeen district. It’s fantastic.
“We are also looking to work with some of the larger sports based teams.
“There’s some very firm plans and goals for the next three years of growing in to English supermarkets and some of the larger English based pub chains.
“We know who our targets are and what we need to do.”
Switching oil and gas for brewing the right move
Looking back on the career change they made, both Dave and David are in no doubt the right decision was made.
Mr Grant said: “It’s so incredibly hard to believe we made the jump at all. But to have done that to what we have now is beyond belief.
“To go down to big events in England and around the world and hear people say Fierce is amazing is an incredible thing.
“Nobody in the director team had ever had anything to do with the beverage industry at all.
“To produce which is probably the third or fourth biggest craft brewery in Scotland is not a bad deal.
“We traded an incredibly rewarding lifestyle versus having a humongous bank balance. That was it.
“I wouldn’t have it any other way. It’s fantastic. The life we have now and what the whole industry has brought us has been incredible.
“There’s no regrets in real terms.”
Mr McHardy added: “We’ve done well to get this far, especially over the last four years.
“We’ve grown fairly large, we are always conservative to make sure we survive and are proud of where we’ve got to now.”