Few crying into beers at decline of big six breweries

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Many of the great names of British brewing have downed their final pints and headed for the exit.

Once there was Bass Charrington, Allied Breweries, Whitbread, Courage Imperial, and Watneys. Scottish & Newcastle was yesterday added to that list of once- mighty brewers.

The recommended take over offer by Carlsberg and Heineken is set to lock the doors for the final time on a British industrial machine that, by owning most of Britain's pubs and brewing the stuff we drank in them, permeated every community in this country.

Over the next few months, the S&N name appears set to wither and eventually die. Whitbread alone survives in name, but now it runs hotels, coffee shops and pub-restaurants.

Who will mourn the passing of the so-called "Big Six"? Not the British pub-goer who long ago signalled indifference to the brewers' product. New generations, led by women, demanded something else - and got it in the form of lagers, wine, soft drinks, alcopops, cocktails, spirits and Babycham.

Nor too the real ale adherents who waged campaigns from the 1970s against what they regarded as tasteless, mass-produced beer.

Nor the publican or pub operator. The old image of the pub - its spit-andsawdust floor or beer-stained carpet, gloomy interior and smoke-smelling regulars replicated across the UK - has been transformed in the past decade, hastened by the smoking ban and the relentless quest by pub operators to keep up with changing customer behaviour.

It was in 1989 that the big brewers were forced to confront how much they were unloved. The then Monopolies and Mergers Commission decided to loosen the ties between brewers and pub retailing.

The Beer Orders offered a fast track to increased competition between the brewer, the pub retailer and the wholesaler. By putting a limit on the number of their tied pubs, the MMC sparked off the brewers' mass abandonment of their pub estates.

"The direct consequence of the Beer Orders in the boardrooms was the strategic decision to get out of brewing, or out of pubs, or both, over a measured period of time," said Robert Humphreys, chairman of the All-Parliamentary Beer group.

A new cadre of pub operators emerged, and the brewers, faced with intense competition and a changing marketplace, saw their margins disappear. Multinationals came in to take them over - Diageo took Guinness, and S&N transformed itself into a producer of a variety of drink products.

From Belgium came InBev, Denmark brought in Carlsberg, the US came over with Molson Coors and Anheuser-Busch. Just as beer was the common dominator of the old UK brewers, lager is the drink that unites the newer intake.

Lagers account for a bigger share of the UK beer market each year. This year, they are projected to command 75 per cent of the market, up from 62 per cent a decade ago, according to research from Canadean.

The British Beer & Pub Association says lager's popularity began in the 1970s, when British people started going on holidays to Spain, drank continental lagers and acquired a taste for them. "That essentially was the dawn of the introduction of lager as a beer style in the UK," the BBPA said.

Mark Hunter, chief executive of Coors Brewers, the UK's second-biggest brewer, said lagers have also become more popular as British society has changed and jobs have become more service-orientated, leading to less physical labour and less demand for heavy beers. "An awful lot of ales were built around heavy industry," he said.

Both production and consumption of beer is in decline, with production falling faster than consumption because more beer is being imported. Since 2000, the amount of beer imported into the UK has risen by 50 per cent.

Brewing is by no means a dead industry. The total number of breweries operating in the UK has trebled to more than 700 since the early 1980s, but this is due to the emergence of some 500 microbreweries, which produce less than 100,000 hectolitres of beer annually and only account for 2 per cent of the total beer market.

The number of large brewing companies has dropped by two-thirds over the same period. Today there are just six national breweries, and 34 regional breweries.

Scottish & Newcastle was begun in 1749 when the William Younger Brewery was established in Leith. Up until the 1990s, S&N was a regional brewer, owning ale brands such as Tartan Special and Newcastle Brown.

It then turned itself into an owner of international lager brands, buying Foster's in the UK with the acquisition of Scottish Courage in 1995 and, in 2000, Brasseries Kronenbourg.

S&N started a process which Heineken and Carlsberg are now completing. Heineken has just a 1 per cent share of the UK beer market but will own close to 30 per cent - becoming the country's biggest brewer - once it completes its acquisition of S&N.

The lager-loving UK is now an ideal market for its global Heineken and Amstel brands. Jean François van Boxmeer, Heineken's chief executive, said: "We have a decline of ales and stouts [in the UK] but an increase of lager, especially in the premium end."


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Not a fan of beer but it's sad to see once thriving businesses in Great Britain coming to an end.

[Paparika]

You forgot Gales, in Horndean alas now sadly gone, H.S.B. will never taste the same

George Gales & Co. LTD -

[Puratech]

It was a somewhat arogant business imo.

As the article says the rest of europe favoured lagers, and things like the strong wheat beers the dutch/germans seem to go for also. As much as taste is subjective, its fairly apparent that english ales (which imo taste shit), arent very popular at all outside of the uk, and the uk's market was no longer captive. Not to mention that british ales are weak by european standards, apparently due to brewing regulations/tax or something.

If you dont like lagers and prefer more flavoursome ale types, try the european stuff, its far tastier, typically stronger so you get a little bit of that alcohol warmth and designed to be enjoyed rather than sunk one after another in a pub.

Thats not to say all british ales are bad, its just that the competition has moved on and the variety available to those of us who enjoy, lets say "beer tasting" holidays in other countries is better.