Greene King is to close its bottling plant at its Belhaven subsidiary in Dunbar and move bottling of Belhaven beers to Bury St Edmunds. Of course they say that this will allow Belhaven to concentrate on brewing and that the brewery is safe.
We'll see.
Green note: tankering beer from Dunbar to Bury St Edmunds and bringing bottled beer and empty tankers back. Not green at all.
11 comments:
Belhaven bottle for other breweries too so it will be a blow to Scottish brewers.
GK don't have a good record on keeping breweries open. Personally I think they are missing a trick by not keeping the breweries they buy open. But what do I know? I'm not running a very profitable brewery!
Of course if Belhaven produced more interesting beers there might be more demand for the bottled product. But they don't, so there isn't the demand to merit a £1m investment in the bottling line.
It's a point of view I suppose.
Irrespective of the quality of the beer, to transport a product that is at least 95% water from one end of the country to the other is madness ~ ecologically, ethically and probably economically too.
Somehow I don't think they will be tankering it around when they can brew a perfectly acceptable* replica down in BSE.
* by this I mean perfectly acceptable to the clowns who think Greede Kerching is a "traditional brewery" making "lots of cask ale so it should be supported".
I just call 'em Camra.
I'm sure GK in part justified the considerable expense of their new BStE massive bottling line on its green(e) credentials!
I looked online for proof of this, but could only find this quote from last year about GK's new lightweight bottle -
"Greene King managing director Justin Adams said: "We are always looking for ways to improve our performance. We are constantly setting ourselves new targets and finding new ways to reduce our carbon footprint through all areas of our business.
"The lightweighting bottling project is just one of many activities that address the growing environmental and commercial issues facing us.""
Elsewhere Keith Ogden, Greene King Brewing Company environment manager - " . . . we aren't complacent . . . We are constantly setting ourselves new targets and finding new ways to reduce our carbon footprint through all areas of our business."
Is it me, or are they weirdly similar quotes!?
Will they be in those awful clear glass bottles too?
Just letting you know, I'm still around. Some changes have been made. I'm now on http://chroniclesofthearts.blogspot.com/ for all your chronicle needs.
TTBC!
I actually think that if (stress that *if*) GK think there is still profit in the Belhaven brand, they will probably keep it brewed in Dunbar, as Scottish beer brewed in England just wouldn't do it for most Scots!
Ed - I think there may still be a few contract-bottlers in Scotland / Northern England - e.g. Cameron's have a small flexible plant & I think there's a stand-alone independent bottlers somewhere on Scotland too (bottling beer & alcopops).
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