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CALGARY – Bill McKenzie is surprisingly calm and civil for a person who just spent a few million dollars expanding his company’s brewing facilities in Calgary only to be blindsided by changes in the provincial budget that could take the froth off his growth plans.

“I’m not going to get on my soap box and complain,” McKenzie, president and CEO of Wild Rose Brewery, said in an interview. However, he added, “the cost of growth has gotten more expensive.”

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McKenzie said that Wild Rose, which recently built a new brewery in a southeast Calgary industrial park after outgrowing its brew pub, “is on the cusp” of crossing the line from what the province deems a small brewery to a mid-sized brewery. To do so, Wild Rose will brew more than 20,000 hectolitres of beer for the first time in its 19-year history.

When the company brews its 20,001st hectolitre, however, the new per-litre rate it must pay the Alberta Gaming and Liquor Commission will jump 22 per cent to 51 cents per litre from 40 cents. The difficulty for Wild Rose and others is that the mark-up is applied retroactively from its first to its 20,000th hectolitre, so the company’s 20,001st hectolitre of beer will effectively cost $620,000.