How we're Responding to COVID-19 and what we are doing to help

As the coronavirus pandemic continues to change the way we work and live, we’re all trying to navigate our way through these uncertain times.

Crisp operate nine production sites across four countries in England, Scotland, Germany and Poland, so we too are adjusting to this “new-normal”.  While our number one concern is to ensure our team and community’s health and safety, we are committed to undertaking all necessary activities to assist in addressing the spread of COVID-19 and maintaining the high quality of goods and services expected by our customers so far as is reasonably practicable.

In response to the current situation, we have established new ways of working to help our customers access the support and product they need.

Below are some of the ways that we are here to help you through this. Our (virtual) door is always open, so don’t hesitate to get in touch.

How We’re Helping

Our entire team are here for you, working remotely or at our maltings

The core business output at Crisp has not been adversely affected by COVID-19. Our sales & marketing, customer support, production planning and transport teams are all working effectively from home. The transition to remote working has been facilitated by our superb IT team and is going well. We are still here for you, just as we were before.

Please see COVID-19 Business Impact Assessment Statement  for further details on how Crisp are continuing to operate during these difficult times.

Our malt continues to be produced and delivered from our sites

We have sufficient raw material on all our sites to withstand a significant period of non-supply of further raw material. We do not anticipate any interruption with our production processes. In the event of significant staff absence, the necessary contingencies are in place to ensure that the maltings can operate with minimal disruption.

We deliver our malts to many of our craft customers through 3rd party hauliers. In the event of any significant disruption to this arrangement, we do have the contingency to use our
own fleet of vehicles.

We’ve reduced our Minimum Order Quantity

We’re reaching out to our customer every day by phone and video call, and overwhelmingly what we’re hearing is that the trade needs flexibility. That’s why we’ve reduced our minimum order quantity for UK customers from one tonne (40 bags on a pallet) to one half tonne (20 bags on a pallet) of any mixture of malt required. We’ve also absorbed the additional cost of transport. We’ve done this to ensure every brewery in the UK can order just what they need without additional strain on their finances.

Bagged Malt Returns

For our UK customers, we are offering the opportunity to return any unused, whole pallets of whole or crushed malt which you do not plan to use in the coming weeks and refund you the cost of the malt (excluding the delivery). We hope this will help with cash flow and storage situations at the brewery. If this is of interest, please contact your sales manager who can arrange this with you. Please see our Bagged Malt Returns document here, which explains the process further and answers any questions you may have.

Adjusted Payment Terms for Customer

We want to do everything we possibly can to support our customers. If you’re having trouble making payments, please reach out to us immediately. Based on your current situation, we may be able to help with payment terms. We’re willing to do whatever we possibly can to help support you during these times.

We’re still teaching and learning

Our entire ethos at Crisp is to help our customers use our malt to produce the best beers and spirits possible. To that end, we launched our online webinars just a few days after lockdown started. We’re following those up with extensive blog posts on brewing topics. If you’ve got some downtime, then please take the opportunity to register for some webinars. You can also watch the previous ones online.

Technical calls

Our sales team usually spend three or four days on the road visiting customers. While we can’t do this, for now, we continue to offer technical support in the way we always did. If you need advice from our team, then get in touch, and we can arrange a video conference to address your issues.

Please Stay Safe

We want to urge you to everything you can to stay safe. We’re all in this together, and it will pass. We’re thinking of everyone in our community who may be affected by this pandemic. We thank those on the front lines who are risking their health and safety to help others. Our heart goes out to everyone in the brewing and distilling industry and associated businesses in crisis.

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