A Westland Breweries Ltd (Greymouth) Beer Tanker outside the Hampden Hotel in Murchison. The Toast of the Coast was the "catch phrase" back in the day for this brew. And I would say many toasts where made at many celebrations using this phrase.
In 1927, Monteith’s Phoenix Brewery was one of five – in Reefton, Hokitika and Kumara – that amalgamated to become Westland Breweries, a company headed by Stuart’s son, William Monteith. The new organisation was based at Turumaha Street, Greymouth, but there was no brewery on site, just a bottling plant until 1949 when a centralised brewery started to take over the operations of the other breweries in the group.One by one, the breweries making up Westland Breweries were closed, with the original Monteith-owned Phoenix Brewery in Reefton pumping out its last beer in 1963, leaving the centralised Greymouth plant the only one servicing the area. In 1969, the expanding empire of Dominion Breweries took over and the brewery became known as DB Westland Breweries.