It’s been about 20 years since the company reopened its doors to brew beer, and two years since Sapporo Breweries of Japan bought Sleeman Breweries. Today, most of the Sapporo beer produced for export to the U.S. is now made at the Guelph, Ont. Brewery, and concerns about getting supplies across the border to the U.S. securely still remains a concern, but for very different reasons.

“We’re doing contract brewing and now a large portion of what is brewed for Sapporo goes to the U.S.,” says Linden Gossen, national health and safety manager with Sleeman Breweries.

With so much product destined for the U.S., Sleeman wanted to upgrade its security measures with an eye towards firming up its procedures to be compliant with the Customs-Trade Partnership Against Terrorism (C-TPAT), which addresses issues pertaining to supply chain and U.S. border security. It asks businesses to ensure the integrity of their security practices and communicate and verify the security guidelines of their business partners within the supply chain.

“From the business risk assessments we did we concluded that if there was an issue at the border it could be a problem for our major brands,” says Gossen. “So we were looking into mitigating some of that risk and that prompted some action on our part in terms of building up our security.”

Sleeman Breweries has also experienced tremendous growth in the last few years and while C-TPAT was one driver, it wasn’t the only reason Gossen wanted to improve the security profile of the company.

“We were already heading down a track of tightening up security and making sure we know who is in the buildings at all times,” he says. “You wouldn’t recognize this place from what it was like 21 years ago. There are also a lot of contractors on site – and that’s been a real challenge to manage. What we’ve determined as an organization is that we need to make sure that we have control and we know who is on site and what’s happening with our facilities.”

With the company growing, the need to have better access control measures in place became critical.