As Australia's alcohol consumption dives to its lowest level in almost 50 years, former Carlton & United Breweries boss John Murphy is hoping to re-carbonate the stagnant market.

He has teamed up with David Prior, the Melbourne businessman who became the first Australian to buy a Scotch whisky distillery after he sold his start-up five:am yoghurt businesses for $80 million.

The first bottles from the Bladnoch Distillery, located in south-west Scotland, have landed in Australia, restarting production at the 200-year-old distillery after a six-year hiatus.

Mr Murphy, who most recently ran Coca-Cola Amatil's alcoholic beverage division, has been engaged to help Mr Prior launch the brand in Melbourne, and the rest of Australia is to follow next year.

He said the brand, Pure Scot, would "blow away the rules", which have stifled big public beverage companies who have been "protecting and defending" rather than investing in new products.

"You've got to be careful of anyone criticising the other companies' business models because they are driven by a different set of expectations," Mr Murphy said.

"They're in a public company, so the innovation needs to be around the big brands because that's the goodwill on the balance sheet.

"The beauty for us with Pure Scot is we don't have to be protecting and defending. We can come in and actually blow the hell out of this thing. We don't have to worry about those rules. We can play with any rules. We can talk to customers and consumers differently."

Mr Murphy said Pure Scot was hoping to lure new consumers - mainly in the 25 to 30 year bracket – into the Scotch whisky category instead of stealing market share from incumbent brands.

He said the company hoped to do this by reinventing Scotch as a social drink, rather than a elitist beverage, centred on "the old stately aged statement" and consumed "in a library, sitting in a leather chair on your own".

"You've got the big brands that are suffering. They're going backwards, declining, as people choose not to drink as much. But inside of that you've got all the up and coming brands, like the Sailor Jerry [rum]… the more premium, category changing brands, some of which are growing at 30 to 200 per cent."

But with every success, there are scores of failures, and Mr Murphy is reminded of his attempt to "renovate" beer when he launched Empire - a ready to drink [RTD] beverage, mixed with guava, in 2004 while at CUB.

"We had one of the world's best ads on that one but it didn't sell anything," he said.

"We were ahead of our time. Having guava mixed in with a beer was actually a great concept. And that came about because the RTD phenomenon, which was taking over and putting pressure on beer.

"The secret with innovation, like with Pure Scot, is you're not going to get them all right. But the biggest mistake is not moving. If you don't fail faster, you're not going to grow faster either. So you want to create your own competition."

The Pure Scot launch comes a month before the Turnbull government releases its highly-anticipated innovation statement

Billionaire investor Alex Waislitz said Australia needed to change its culture as well as provide more tax credits for venture capital investors, and research and development grants to foster innovation.

"We need to encourage entrepreneurship and a psyche that this country doesn't have, which says that having a go is worthwhile, risking failure is OK, and achieving success is aspirational and should be supported," Mr Waislitz sais.

"I think what we have to do is try to reverse what's happened in recent years where good ideas and good people have gone offshore to a more friendly environment.

"Australians have been very successful in that regard in many parts of the world. But they should be here and we should be encouraging them to come back and find a methodology to do that and we should be supporting the next group of entrepreneurs who want to have a go."