A TANUNDA distillery is at the forefront of a world-first, with Durand Distillery producing H2Gin to a commercial quantity, all by using hydrogen while being completely off the coal-fired power grid.
Inspired by his grandfather and seeking a career change to spend more time with his family, owner-operator Brett Durand started the distillery in 2016 but the Covid-19 pandemic forced Brett to change the way he operated his business.
“I started the gin distillery in 2016 as a small artisan distillery, focussing on gin and we were looking to branch out, but the pandemic and a few other distractions impacted on that,” said Brett.
“In 2022, I had to move the distillery to a new location due to circumstances out of my control.”
This move put pressure on Brett and his business, where he describes himself as everything from the CEO to the cleaner, and forced him to look at how he operated after being faced with high start-up costs.
“When we moved to the new location we made inquiries as to how we can update the power on site, the quote for all the things like new cables, transformers and that the numbers stack up quite quickly,” he said.
“I didn’t have those available funds.
I sat there one night thinking ‘I am going to go broke if I can’t make the distillery work’. I had been toying with the idea of hydrogen for a while.”
Late one night with a glass of wine in hand, Brett bought the piece of equipment which would change his business.
“I was hunting for the equipment that I needed when a direct-fire, plug-in-a-hydrogen tank, make-fire piece of equipment become available,” he said.
“So I bought it.”
Brett’s next step became a source of hydrogen, eventually finding it with an industrial supplier in the local community before setting up his facility.
From there, he bought a 75-litre direct fire still to boil alcohol before also taking the next step in making his business environmentally sustainable.
“I went and bought a bore pump, a deep cell battery and a solar panel and I run the cooling system through completely renewable sources,” Brett said.
“It means we are not actually connected to the coal-fired power network at the moment.”
Brett is currently producing one product, his H2Gin, as a completely renewable product and said it was a great test as he hopes to expand his business over the next 12 months.
“This product proves that we can do it and make a product that is commercially viable by burning hydrogen and I can,” he said.
I now know the economic case for using hydrogen will work, so the next step is to build a larger facility, get more hydrogen in and continue from there.”
Brett’s unique concept has seen significant interest from industry, government and the education sector but he said that the best ideas can sometimes come out of necessity.
“I didn’t have a choice. If I had the choice I would have gone the conventional method and I would’ve been on a greater production scale than I was right now,” he said.
“But I didn’t have a choice and now I’m glad I didn’t have that choice because it works and we can push forward with it.”
As well as H2Gin, Brett also runs the Barossa Gin School and he said that it is his way of sharing what he loves doing with other people.
“It’s a craft gin-making workshop. It’s four hours and we built recipes from raw materials right in customers’ hands,” he said.
“That is my way of being able to share what I love with people because it can be lonely distilling in a shed by yourself. So I love sharing that with other people.”
As for the next steps, Brett wants to continue to grow the business and continue to develop the use of hydrogen and renewable energy in the gin-making process, with a new site firmly in his sight.
“If we had this conversation in 2024, I’d like to say we have stakeholders on board and designs approved and shovels in the ground to build this new facility,” he said.
“I can picture what we need and we just need that expertise of those key knowledge centres to make it safe and have that commercial success.”