Major pub chain with 1,600 boozers to close 200-year-old brewery leaving locals furious
PUNTERS have been left furious after a major pub chain with 1,600 boozers closed down their 200-year-old brewery.
Greene King is calling time at its centenary Bury St. Edmunds brewery and moving to a new location where it will brew classic cask ales alongside more contemporary, bubbly craft brews.
With the aim of modernising the company and expanding its craft beer production to appeal to a younger demographic, the Old Speckled Hen Brewer plans to construct a new £40 million facility in the town.
Greene King is to relocate the majority of its brewing operations from the city’s Westgate Brewery, where it has been making beer for two centuries, to the new location.
It comes at the same time as the brewer is moving further away from classic cask beers due to a decline in demand for the cellar-temperature beer type.
As part of Greene King’s efforts to achieve Net Zero by 2040 and a 50% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2030, the new brewery will also be built with an emphasis on environmental sustainability.
Nick Mackenzie, chief executive officer at Greene King, said: “We’re obviously designing [the new brewery] to allow for changes in customer trends, to allow us to have a significant cask element, but also over time to be able to have an equally significant craft presence with modern beers.”
The news did not sit well with locals, who were fuming on Facebook.
One wrote: “I mean, it’s not craft beer.But that brewery is at the heart of Bury St Edmunds – the beer café there is great, it has a decent shop, they run tours, and it’s generally an impressive building! Bury basically IS Greene King…”
Another commented: “Not another one.”
A third replied: “Craft beer? Deluded nonsense! Get in the sea.”
The Suffolk-based brewer introduced Level Head, a session IPA, and Flint Eye, a dry-hopped lager, as its debut specialty brews in 2022.
Meanwhile, cask ale sales in British pubs have decreased from over £1.2 billion prior to the pandemic to £973 million in 2023, as reported by hospitality industry data provider CGA.
But Mackenzie insisted: “Cask is still a very significant part of the market.
“There’s a lot of negativity around cask and its long term trajectory, but we certainly see there is an opportunity there.
“We’re still selling five million pints of cask every week.”
It is anticipated that the new location will require around three years to finish before Greene King can start brewing there.
“We know things can change over time. So we’ve tapped into supporting low and no [alcohol], we’ve tapped into some more craft type beers that we historically didn’t do,” Mackenzie added
“But we’re maintaining a view that cask ales are really high quality with good provenance in terms of the ingredients within those beers. That will tap into a younger generation in time, but that’s gonna take time for us to get there.
“[Cask] will remain pretty important to us, but we’ve then got to adapt over time to make sure we get the right balance between where consumer trends are.”
Greene King, founded in 1799 by Benjamin Greene, is one of Britain’s most well-known provincial breweries. Its brands include Old Speckled Hen, Greene King IPA, and Abbot Ale.
In addition to making beer, it operates roughly 3,000 pubs across the country, employing approximately 39,000 people in total.
It was once a public corporation before being purchased for £2.7 billion in 2019 by an investment firm run by Hong Kong’s richest family.
Mackenzie said that while the brewer intends to discontinue most of its brewing at the Westgate Brewery, it may continue to produce small quantities of particular beers there.
He explained: “The likelihood is we will retain some elements of small scale brewing here. We’ve got pubs right next to the brewery and we’ve got a brewery tour, so we will look to retain brewing heritage elements on the site.”
It comes as new numbers show that the UK brewing business experienced a net closure rate of 38 in the first quarter of 2024, reports The Morning Advertiser.
The Society of Independent Brewers and Associates (SIBA) Brewery Tracker, which includes all brewery openings and closures, reported that the UK now has 1,777 operating breweries.
However, when compared year on year, the statistics was more positive, with several locations experiencing overall growth compared to the previous year.
There were 11 new breweries in the east, three in the south-east, and two in the south-west.
Meanwhile, a family favourite pub chain is to close more than 200 locations and axe 1,500 jobs.
Whitbread plans to slash its chain of branded restaurants across the UK in favour of building more hotel rooms.
The hotel and restaurant company has around 840 sites across the UK and owns brands including Premier Inn, Beefeater and Brewers Fayre.
It revealed the plans in its full year results – an update on its financial condition and operations – which came out today.
Whitbread said it plans to convert 112 restaurants into hotel extensions, while closing 126 “loss-making” venues.
It hopes the sales will be completed within the next two years and the restaurants will remain open as usual until they are sold.