Bundaberg: The Local Brewer that Became a Global Sensation

Bund­aberg Brewed Drinks was grow­ing fast but faced a defin­ing chal­lenge: how to scale glob­al­ly with­out dilut­ing the craft, dis­ci­pline, and flavour advan­tage that made it spe­cial. As inter­na­tion­al expan­sion accel­er­at­ed and com­plex­i­ty mul­ti­plied, lead­er­ship had to evolve from hands-on oper­a­tor to strate­gic archi­tect. The ques­tion wasn’t just how to grow, but how to grow with­out compromise.

With coach­ing from Lawrence & Co., John McLean and his lead­er­ship team strength­ened strate­gic dis­ci­pline, clar­i­fied their fly­wheel, and shift­ed John from hands-on oper­a­tor to strate­gic CEO. They imple­ment­ed rig­or­ous plan­ning rhythms, built a stronger man­age­ment bench, and aligned the orga­ni­za­tion around pro­tect­ing Bundaberg’s core flavour advan­tage while expand­ing glob­al­ly. This focus enabled Bund­aberg to scale across 60+ coun­tries, grow prof­itabil­i­ty, and build a next-gen­er­a­tion com­pa­ny that runs with dis­ci­pline — with­out com­pro­mis­ing what makes it special.