Islands and beers: Toasting a discriminatory approach to small island manufacturing

This paper explores the relationship between beers and island development, using a global sweep but with a special reference to the insular Pacific. It adopts a discriminatory approach, touching upon the role and impact that niche and bouquet beer manufacturing can have on the socioeconomic development of small islands. It departs from a personal observation: many small island jurisdictions have their own brewery. Indeed, the brewery could also be the island territory's largest indigenous manufacturing concern. While small islands are associated with low manufacturing capacity and diseconomies of scale, nevertheless ‘a local brewery’ comes across, in many cases, as a profitable and glaring exception that speaks to the attractions and virtues of locality branding.