Spoilt by Progress

If you look at the Banks's Brewery website, it describes, in a timeline, the various breweries taken over by the company. For most of the time the owning company was Wolverhampton and Dudley Breweries and then Marstons, and now Carlsberg Marstons Brewing (CMBC).

Back in the day, brewing companies, on the whole, took over other brewers to acquire outlets, or sometimes, to buy out an owner who wanted to cash in. The latest in the company's line was the buyout by Carlsberg of the minority share of the brewing company formed by Carlsberg and Marstons as a joint venture.  Moving back a little, Wolverhampton and Dudley Breweries themselves had acquired several breweries by takeover. These included well known names such as Jennings in the Lake District, Camerons of Hartlepool (now independent again) and Julia Hansons of Dudley, taken over in 1943. In 1999, Marston, Thompson and Evershed and Mansfield breweries were acquired. This was a now a big company, and it was renamed Marstons to reflect its national presence.  

Further additions to the company were some brewing interests of Thwaites and the former Wells and Youngs brewery in Bedford, which was bought and sold, and along the way, all taken over breweries were closed and others, too, were acquired and eventually closed.  Under Marstons though, breweries such as Jennings, Ringwood and Wychwood hung on, only to be closed when Carlsberg acquired a controlling interest.

Now the original brewery, the Park Brewery in Wolverhampton, is set to close next year. CMBC cite the lower demand for cask ale and the loss of the contract to brew San Miguel - though what that has to do with Banks's is somewhat opaque. The Park Brewery has been in operation since 1875 and its beers were once legendary in the Midlands, though much less so now.  Reading about it, it seems to be considered as a traditional brewery, with somewhat outdated brewing kit. The subsequent lack of flexibility, and the availability of additional capacity at the former Marston's site at Burton, means the writing was certainly on the wall. Nor can its value as a city centre site be overlooked.

It is almost forgotten that Carlsberg-Tetley Brewing Limited, existed from Jan 1993 - Mar 2004.  The famous Joshua Tetley Brewery in Leeds was taken over by Carlsberg Group. The Leeds Brewery was closed in 2011, and demolished in 2012, with production contracted out by Carlsberg to remaining breweries in the group.  In the meantime, they had already shut the huge Tetley Walker plant in Warrington in 1996 and then sold the Ind Coope Brewery Burton Brewery to Bass in 1998, with the loss of brands such as former Champion Beer of Britain, Ind Coope Draught Burton Ale. Although the brewery is still brewing under Molson-Coors ownership.  Tetley Bitter was farmed out to become the shadow of its former self that it remains to this day.

So, is over capacity the real reason for this? Sadly, there is little point in denying that is a fact, but the lack lustre brands produced by CMBC does not give much hope for the future either. Where does this leave us, then? In the short term, many of the large number of existing brands from formerly well thought of breweries, will be brewed on a single central site. The outcome of that will also probably mean more rationalisation in time. Choice will be diminished once again. Cask drinkers expect more than bland beer brewed down to a price that Pub Companies will pay, when they know it could be so much better. Sales will diminish further.

What can we learn from this?  The big players, all foreign owned, do not see it as their future to any meaningful extent. Cask is being further driven into being a niche product. Family and other small brewers need to fill the quality gap, though routes to market make that difficult.  

And finally,  if you want to keep your brewery alive, keep away from Carlsberg.  They have form. A lot of form. 

Supermarket bottle ranges will also likely be rationalised, and would anyone bet money that CMBC Burton has a long-term future?

Carlsberg makes the previous famous Whitbread Tour of Destruction seem like a minor blip in brewing history, and do they brew the best beer in the world?  well,you already know the answer to that.