Leopard Brewery

Description

The site of Leopard Brewery, Hastings St, Hastings.

The brewery was sited in Hastings Street and on the corner of Ellison Road and the corner with St Aubyn Street East. Phone number 4318.

The brewery was known as “Burton Brewery” in earlier days but was changed because of confusion with a brewery with a similar name in Palmerston North in the 1950s to “Leopard Brewery”.

In 1880 the site was under the name of Ellis, the mayor of Hastings.  Edward Newbigin bought the brewery in 1894, keeping it in the family until 1957, when it was sold to Malayan Breweries in Singapore, a subsidary of Heineken Brewery, Holland.

In the 1990s the brewery was closed down by New Zealand Breweries who once had the Heineken agency, then sold it off to Dominion Breweries, as they had made a successful new brand called Steinlager.

In later years the brewery was disassembled and the site became Mitre 10 Mega Store until they moved to a site in Nelson Park, Hastings, and after a few years the area was cut into three sites, one being Warehouse Stationery, another a furniture warehouse, the other awaiting a tenant in 2015.

[Hawke’s Bay Knowledge Bank – photo probably taken in the 1950s or 1960s as it was taken by Russell Orr, who died in 1977 and only took colour photos in the last few years of his life.]