While a local craft cidery is “excited” about recently announced provincial funding aimed to help bolster the industry, questions still remain about how the funding will be allocated.
On Sept. 4, the province announced a new $6-million Ontario Craft Cider Marketing Fund to be distributed over the next six years to help roughly 60 Ontario cideries get the news out about their products.
As part of the announcement, the Ontario Craft Cider Association is receiving $89,200 to expand the DrinkON Apples Certification, which, when appearing on a can, indicates the cider contained within is made from 100 per cent Ontario-grown apples.
“It's super awesome that there's money coming towards craft cider, and I'd love to see where it's actually going, and they haven't defined that yet,” said Martha Lowry, co-owner of Coldwater-based Woodfolk Cider.
Lowry said she hopes the funding “goes towards some good programming that they just haven’t created yet,” mentioning that existing funding opportunities are allocated to offset restaurant and licensee sales.
“Currently, that money is allocated for a program that helps you offset some of the taxation on your licensee sales, so restaurants and that kind of thing, and that's the only thing it helps with. For instance, last year, I would have qualified for $50," she explained.
“If restaurants are doing well, and we're doing more restaurant sales, that'll be helpful, but it's pretty unclear about how they plan to use that money at the moment.”
The province also runs the Small Cidery Program, which offers grants up to $220,000 for cidery businesses to hire more staff and purchase state-of-the-art equipment, but Lowry said that funding is essentially a rebate on a company’s sales.
“Truly it's just like a rebate on your sales, so I could take that money and do anything with it, if I got money back,” she said. "The biggest winners are the big … players who have a lot of restaurant sales.”
A truly helpful move, Lowry said, would be for the province to change how apple cider products are taxed, mentioning her cidery – along with many others in Ontario – use Ontario apples but are taxed at the same rate as imported wine.
“There's no reason why we shouldn't be treated either the same as Ontario wine … if we’re using Ontario apples, or the same as beer.”
Given the cost of producing cider compared with beer, a different tax structure could be “huge” for the industry, she said.
“The real helpful thing for cideries would be a different tax structure, because currently … cider costs between four to five times the amount it costs to make for beer, and we're taxed at double the rate of beer. People expect it to be the same price,” she said.
“That would be huge for the apple industry, huge for cider. That'd be great for consumers to get better prices.”
--with files from Jessica Owen
