Beer in 1958 (part two)

The first article in Beer in Britain contains a very handy overview of the brewing industry.

First, the number of people employed directly or indirectly by brewing:

“The industry to-day comprises large, medium and small brewery firms — over 250 of them — but the six largest make over a third of the output. Breweries and maltings together employ about 70,000 people (operatives and staff, including lorry and tanker crews) with a high average net output of £1,240 a year, 45 per cent, above the average for all manufactures. The small number of workers in a brewery is striking. The retail distribution occupies far more; upwards of 350,000 workers are employed in licensed premises, but these include hotels as well as pubs. The whole chain of activities listed earlier must occupy nearly 500,000 people. Many others are employed in allied trades: by suppliers of machinery and bottles and glasses, and by firms using by-products, making yeast into vegetable extracts or supplying fertilizer from hops.”
"Beer in Britain", 1960, page 4.

Of course, there were more than 250 breweries in 1958. They’re talking about the number of brewing companies. Which had been falling throughout the 1950’s, as this table shows:

Number of breweries in the UK 1950 - 1960
Year	Breweries
1950	567
1951	539
1952	524
1953	501
1954	479
1955	460
1956	426
1957	416
1958	399
1959	378
1960	358
Sources:
BBPA Statistical Handbook 2003, p. 92
Brewers' Almanack 1955 p.68
Brewers' Almanack 1962 p.67

I’m wondering who the six largest brewers were in 1958. Here’s my guess: Watney Mann, Courage Barclay, Whitbread, Hammond United, Charrington and M&B. I could well be wrong, mind.

70,000 isn’t a huge number. But brewing isn’t very labour-intensive. You only need a handful of people to run a brewhouse. Very few of those 70,000 would have been working in the brewhouse. A large number would have been working in ancillary jobs, such as drayman. And at a time when casks were still made of oak, the cooperage would have been one of the biggest employers in a brewery. With so few workers, it’s not surprising that the average net output was above that of most industries. When the pub trade is included, however, the numbers employed look much more respectable.

In 1958 there were 69,913 pubs in England and Wales* and 6,074** in Scotland, making a total of 75,987. If 350,000 were employed, that comes to just 4.6 per pub. And remember that figure included hotels. But there were also 22,567*** clubs in England and Wales plus 1,219*** in Scotland. If you add in those, that’s just 3.5 employees per licensed premises. That seems pretty low. But, if they aren’t counting the landlord and their family member, it could be right.

Something about mergers in the industry:

“The trend to bigger breweries has been partly by amalgamation, and this continues. The consumption of beer is below the peak (of 1945) and tends still to fall; there are many competing claims on consumers' purses (including television and, of course, wines and spirits). Hence amalgamation is perhaps the main way to further development, though the bigger firms have their own vigorous selling campaigns. (They are conspicuously among the largest poster advertisers; and they differ as conspicuously in the concessions they make in this part of their work to the susceptibilities of the highbrow.)

The most recent amalgamations have included some between already large  firms—Watney's and Mann's, for example, and Barclays and Courage's. Here there are special considerations; the need, for example, to close Watney's brewery at Victoria for town-planning reasons.
"Beer in Britain", 1960, pages 4 - 5.

That last statement is news to me. Watney’s brewery was on a piece of desirable real estate, between Victoria Station and Buckingham Palace. After closure it was redeveloped as an office complex. Not sure why they needed to merge with Manns as they had another large brewery further west along the Thames at Mortlake.

There were a lot of takeovers in the 1950’s, with some breweries, such as Hammonds and Whitbread, going on buying sprees. Which inevitably led to a reduction in the number of breweries and an increase in scale of the remaining ones. Falling beer sales were one of the driving forces behind consolidation. Buying up a rival and its pubs was one of the easiest ways to increase output in a declining market.

Beer production started to rise after 1960, but only exceeded the 1946 figure in 1970. You can see in the table below that despite this average output per brewery rose considerably in the second half of the 1950’s.

Beer production and output per brewery 1950 - 1960
Year	Bulk barrels	Breweries	Average output per brewery (barrels)
1950	26,513,997	567	46,762
1951	24,891,746	539	46,181
1952	25,156,489	524	48,009
1953	24,883,227	501	49,667
1954	24,582,303	479	51,320
1955	23,934,215	460	52,031
1956	24,551,158	426	57,632
1957	24,506,524	416	58,910
1958	24,647,978	399	61,774
1959	23,783,833	378	62,920
1960	26,115,012	358	72,947
Sources:
Brewers' Almanack 1955, p. 50
Brewers' Almanack 1962, p. 48
BBPA Statistical Handbook 2003, p. 92
Brewers' Almanack 1955 p.68
Brewers' Almanack 1962 p.67

More about pubs next. 






* Brewers' Almanack 1971, page 83.
** 1922 – 1972: The Brewers' Society Statistical handbook 1973”, page 52.
*** Brewers' Almanack 1971, page 83.
**** 1922 – 1972: The Brewers' Society Statistical handbook 1973”, page 52.