By Keith Flett
Carlsberg Britvic the global lager and soft drinks company has announced a plan to exit from brewing in the historic location of Burton. 310 jobs are at risk, as well as the future of iconic beers such as Bass and Marston’s Pedigree.
Carlsberg of course is well known for brewing lager while Britvic does soft drinks. Cask beer, which Carlsberg is the UK’s largest producer of, comes a poor third in the balance sheets of the Company’s accountants.
In fact Carlsberg has only run the Burton brewery for a couple of years. It was previously owned by Marstons, in a partnership. They no longer brew and are now a pub company.
Carlsberg has been responsible for a string of brewery closures the most recent being Banks’s in Wolverhampton in 2025 and before that Ringwood in Hampshire.
Burton brews a range of cask beers, many relocated there after previous Carlsberg brewery closures.
Carlsberg says that cask ale sales have declined significantly while also at the same time closing breweries and failing to market the beers. The reality has been exposed by another even bigger global beer company, ABInBev. They own Bass, which is brewed at Burton under contract. They had ignored it for years but recently decided to give it a sales push. The result was that sales shot up, to the extent that demand often now exceeds supply.
Burton is due to close in the summer of 2027. While it brews Bass and Marstons Pedigree, and quite a number of other well-known cask beer brands which it owns, it plans to retain only the Hobgoblin brand. It claims it is looking for other breweries to take on the production of other brands.
Some have raised the question of whether historic cask ale brands which are less well known than Bass and Pedigree are worth continuing with. Global beer companies have moved their brewing around the UK until the local and regional identities they had are much diminished. It is a debate where the drinkers who enjoy those beers should have the decisive say. It will take campaigning work to make that happen.
Workers’ control of the means of brewing?
While Carlsberg clearly has no interest in cask beer it is to be hoped that a campaign, backed by Government intervention, can remove the Burton brewery from its ownership and place it in more socially responsible hands. Workers’ control anyone, if Carlsberg don’t want it? Certainly it is possible that the Burton brewery could be sold, not for flats but as a working brewery. Whether the interest is there its obviously far too soon to say. Carlsberg have form in handing over historic assets to those who are actually interested in them. They closed Jennings brewery in Cockermouth but when a group of local beer enthusiasts and brewers showed interest they sold it to them. It has now re-opened. When they ripped out the historic Burton Union brewing system a good bit went to Thornbridge at Bakewell who now use it to brew distinctive cask and craft beers.
The trade paper The Morning Advertiser has said in a comment piece that the decision to exit Burton has the hallmark of accountants and spreadsheets who have no interest in beer. Writing in the paper, Phil Mellows has argued that the closure of Burton is a symptom of how capitalism’s drive to concentration and monopoly has little space for the quirky demands of cask beer. It is a format that is brewed mainly in the UK while being owned by global beer companies who do not brew it elsewhere.
Mellows’ view is that it is the end of cask ale as a mass market product. I don’t agree. After all real ale is on the bar in 800 Wetherspoons pubs, often featuring the independently brewed beers which are blocked from appearing on the bar in pubs owned or backed by global big beer. Even so if Burton does have to close it should give a boost to many breweries in the UK who are actually interested in brewing good quality cask beer.
There remains a problem. CAMRA has said that the beer brands Carlsberg Britvic don’t want would be better off being brewed by independents who know about cask beer. But will they be able to get the beers onto the bars in pubs? This issue has renewed calls for an inquiry by the Competition and Market Authority into how Big Beer is squeezing independent beer out of the market.
Getting that inquiry and getting action to reset the market more towards those who want to drink good quality beer is just as important as the campaign around Burton. The brewery is unionised and the impact of its closure on the town of Burton will be significant. It may well be that there are more factors to come into play yet.
Grappling with the impact of global big beer requires activity by beer-loving politicians like Andy Burnham, by organised campaigners like CAMRA, but also by rank and file drinkers. Supping the occasional pint of cask ale is the best way to ensure that the accountants see there is a demand for the product beyond their balance sheets.
