Craft beer fear: Who can save Britain’s breweries?

Local brewers are shutting up shop. What will come of that local pint of craft ale?

What is Britain but a nation of beer drinkers? And sure – we like a Stella or a San Miguel as much as any old European nation, but there will always be a special place in our hearts for that pint of local ale down the boozer. Or… will there?

A “perfect storm” of high taxes, narrow routes to market and bulky energy bills has led to a crisis in British brewing. The latest fallen comrade is Banks’s Brewery in Wolverhampton, which is set to close after 150 years of beer brewing. The plans are part of the wider Carlsberg Marston’s Brewing Company’s restructuring. Its CEO Paul Davies said it had been an “extremely difficult” decision but was necessary to restructure the businesses to maintain its competitiveness in a “challenging UK beer market”.

And indeed, the UK beer market has proven to be challenging, to say the least. The proportion of UK breweries which entered insolvency in 2023 grew by a staggering 82 per cent in 2023, rising from 38 in 2022 to 69 by the end of December. Despite the fact that in London you can’t move without knocking into a pint of craft beer on a Thursday afternoon, craft breweries have in fact struggled to extend beyond local markets. Because of this, a sudden drop in sales can quickly impact them.

It’s not just the Midlands. This March Asahi UK shut its Greenwich brewery – which produces Meantime and Dark Star beers – in a “further blow to British brewing”.

In Wolverhampton, it’s not just the chance to get sloshed on local artisanship that people will miss. It’s what it represents: history and pride. If you’re acquainted with the Midlands city, you would recognise the brewery’s chimney, a feature that has long been a recognisable peak in the city’s skyline. The closure represents “the destruction of our brewing heritage” explains Mark Hewitt, chair of Wolverhampton Campaign for Real Ale (Camra).

On a macro level, the result of these hard times is a closure of small breweries and the “consolidation of the brewing industry into just a few large, international players” says Nik Antona, chair of the national Camra.

This “erodes our brewing heritage, consumer choice, the diversity of beer in pubs across the country and the access to market for small, independent producers”. Raise a pint – in sorrow – to that.