The Cargo Collective

Queenstown's Event & Experience Venue. A private venue for up to 300 guests with its own exclusive garden, and a working brewery and distillery attached — so your group can hold their function and distil their own gin or tour the brewery without leaving the site. Ten minutes from central Queenstown, fifteen from the airport.

The Brew Hall is the Cargo Collective's dedicated event space, designed by Queenstown's Yoke Architects with a stone exterior, high vaulted ceilings and glass panels looking through into our working brewery. It's a genuine blank canvas — a single, uninterrupted space with no fixed furniture, so nothing dictates how you use it. The stone-and-timber shell gives the room warmth and character on its own, and it takes styling beautifully. We've laid it out for seated galas with a stage and dance floor, standing product launches, theatre-style conferences, weddings and full-production DJ nights.

Full-height glass doors run the length of the hall and open onto our garden, which is exclusive to your event — no other guests, no shared space. It gives the venue an easy indoor–outdoor flow: in summer, guests spill onto the private lawn for arrival drinks, lawn games and long evenings under the trees with the mountains behind. In winter, the doors close and the hall becomes a warm, self-contained space — so your event works whatever Queenstown decides to do that day.

The Brew Hall holds 300 for a cocktail function, seats 170 for dinner, or takes 200 theatre-style, with room for a stage, dance floor and full AV alongside a seated dinner. Venue hire includes exclusive use, tables and chairs, stage, sound system, microphones, screen and projector, and in-house lighting. Access is available from 8am for setup, with our licence running until midnight.
Adjoining the main hall, the brewery is a smaller, more intimate space surrounded by gleaming stainless tanks and the working equipment behind the beer. It's ideal as a tasting area for a guided beer or gin flight, a breakout space alongside a function in the hall, or the setting for an intimate dinner for up to 16. Groups often start here with a drink before moving through to the Brew Hall.

What sets us apart is what sits within this unique building. Our on-site brewery and Wild Rivers Distillery mean an event here can include a Make Your Own Gin workshop, a brewery tour and tasting, or our Label Lab, where guests design and take home beer or gin with their own label. We also run the Spice Tank and the Great Cargo Bake Off — team-building experiences built in-house that you won't find anywhere else in Queenstown.

Catering is prepared on site, from passed canapés and shared BBQ menus through to plated dining, with all dietary requirements catered for. Beverages are charged on consumption and include our own Cargo beers, Wild Rivers Gin, and Central Otago wines.

We're at Arthurs Point, ten minutes from central Queenstown, fifteen from the airport and a minute from the base of Coronet Peak — close enough to be easy, far enough to feel like an occasion.