Brewery ownership of pubs 1974 - 2017

Some more lovely tables today. One taken from the BBPA Statistical Handbook 2018 which arrived recently the other is somewhat older.

Let's kick off with older of the two tables, wjhich shows the state of play back in the mid-1970s, when the Big Six was a boout at its peak.

Between them the Big Six owned getting on for 40,000 on licences. Now I'm not sure if that's only pubs. I suspect not. I have a feeling, given the size of the total, that there are other non-pub on licences included.

The Big Six weren't all roughly equal. Bass Charrington was significantly bigger than anyone else. They owned more pubs and their share of beer sales was larger. They had almost double the mnarket share of the two smallest, Watney and Scottish & Newcastle. The latter owned fewer pubs than the others because much of the trade in Scotland was nominally free. Though, in practice, most pubs North of the border were tied through loans.

Significantly, the Big Six between them owned almost three times as many pubs as all the other breweries combined. It should really be the Big Seven, but CAMRA generally left them out as they didn't have a tied estate. They had a diifferent model to all the other breweries, providing bottled Guinness for other breweries' pubs.

Pub ownership 1974 - 1976
Bewery	Uk Breweries	% beer sales	On Licences (1974)	% On Licences
Bass Charrington	12	20	9,256	8.15%
Allied Breweries	7	17	7,665	6.75%
Whitbread	19	13	7,865	6.92%
Watney/Grand Met	8	12	5,946	5.23%
Scottish & Newcastle	3	11	1,678	1.48%
Courage	8	9	5,921	5.21%
Guinness	1	9	0	0
Total Big Seven	58	91	38,331	33.7%
Others	89	9	13,800	12.1%
Tied Trade			52,131	45.9%
Free Trade			61,498	54.1%
Total	147	100	113,629
Source:
“The Brewing Industry, a Guide to Historical Records” by Lesley Richmond & Alison Turton.
Notes:
No. breweries and % beer sales 1976
No. on licences 1974

The situation today looks very different, with most of the large brewing groups owning no pubs. The exception being Heineken. Though two-thirds of the tied houses belong to just three breweries: Mastons, Greene King and Heineken. The latter two have estates approaching those of the BIG Six in size.

Brewery-owned pubs in 2017
Brewery	No. pubs
Adnams & Co PLC	49
Anheuser Busch Inbev UK	0
Arkell's Brewery Ltd	96
Asahi UK	4
George Bateman & Son Ltd	48
Daniel Batham & Son Ltd	11
S. A. Brain & Co Ltd	203
Brewdog	34
C & C Group PLC	0
Camerons Brewery Ltd.	58
Carlsberg UK Ltd.	0
Donnington Brewery	17
Elgood & Sons Ltd	28
Everards Brewery Ltd	172
Felinfoel Brewery Co Ltd.	73
Fuller. Smith & Turner PLC	373
Greene King PLC	3,048
Hall & Woodhouse Ltd	188
Harvey & Sons (Lewes) Ltd.	48
Heineken UK	2,836
Holden's Brewery	21
Joseph Holt Ltd.	128
Hook Noiton Brewery Co. Ltd.	36
Hydes Brewery Ltd.	53
J W Lees & Co. (Brewers) Ltd	141
Liberation Group (Butcombe)	69
Marston's PLC	1,421
McMullen & Sons Ltd.	125
Molson Coors (UK) Brewers	0
J.C. & R.H. Palmer Ltd	54
Frederlc Robinson Ltd	261
St Austell Brewery Co. Ltd	176
Shepherd Neame Ltd.	314
Samuel Smith Old Brewery	300
Timothy Taylor & Co.Ltd.	20
T & R Theakston Ltd	0
Daniel Thwaites PLC	248
Wadworth & Co Ltd.	224
Charless Wells	186
Total	11,063
Source:
BBPS Statistical Handbook 2018, pages 70 - 71.

Bass Charrington once owned almost as many pubs as the total number of brewery-owned pubs today.

Big Seven tied houses 1963 - 1989

I'm not quite done with tied houses yet. Especially now I've found some handy new information.

I've now got a fairly decent set of numbers on how many tied houses the big brewers owned. It's made me realise that the rise of the Big Seven was more uneven than I had realised. With some of the companies coalescing earlier than others.

Allied - created by a merger of Ind Coope & Allsopp, Tetley Walker and Ansells - was fully formed in 1963 and didn't really grow after that date. For a while they were considerably larger than any of their rivals.

Courage and Whitbread, on the other hand, didn't reach their peak size until the 1970's. In the case of Courage, this was after their merger with John Smiths, a considerable force in the North of England. While Whitbread continued to snap up medium-sized regional breweries through the 1960's and early 1970's.

Bass Charrington, a merger of Bass M&B and Charrington United, was a combination of the third and fifth largest brewing companies. They immidiately catapulted to the top of the league and remained there until the Big Six melted away in the 1990's.

The whole consolidation process came to a jarring halt in the mid-1970's, when the Labour government told the Big Six they weren't allowed to take anyone else over. I can see now that it had a stultifying effect on British brewing. Along with the Beer Orders, it's the main reaason no large Brirish brewing company exists today. Without interfernce, the Big Seven would probably have been whittled down to three of four, at most.

I didn't realise it at the time, but when I started drinkibng in the early 1970's, the big brewers had already reached their peak. They owned around 55% of all pubs but, through loan, ties, controlled even more. There was very little truly free trade in the early 1970's. In 1974, 13,800 were owned by smaller brewers, meaning around three-quarters of pubs in the UK were owned by a brewer.

It's strange now to think that at one point two companies owned a qurter of the UK's pubs and three more than a third. How the beer retailing world has changed in the last 30 years.

Big Seven tied houses 1963 - 1989
	1963		1967		1970		1974		1989
Company	no. pubs	%	no. pubs	%	no. pubs	%	no. pubs	%	no. pubs	%
Allied	9,300	12.60%	8,250	11.37%	8,250	11.55%	7,665	10.87%	6,000	7.48%
Watney	5,500	7.45%	6,667	9.19%	6,135	8.59%	5,946	8.43%	6,100	7.60%
Bass M&B	4,100	5.56%	10,230	14.10%	9,450	13.22%	9,256	13.13%	7,300	9.10%
Charr Utd	5,000	6.78%
Courage	4,800	6.50%	4,418	6.09%	6,000	8.40%	5,921	8.40%	5,100	6.36%
Whitbread	3,500	4.74%	7,376	10.17%	8,280	11.59%	7,865	11.16%	6,500	8.10%
S&N	1,700	2.30%	2,076	2.86%	1,700	2.38%	1,678	2.38%	2,300	2.87%
Guinness	2		2		2
total	33,902	45.94%	39,019	53.78%	39,817	55.72%	38,331	54.37%	33,300	41.51%
total no. pubs	73,800		72,550		71,457		70,495		80,212
Sources:
The British Brewing Industry 1830 - 1980 by T.R. Gourvish and R.G. Wilson, 1994, page 472.
The Brewers' Society Statistical handbook 1973”, page 50.
2011 Statistical Handbook of the BBPA, page 74
"Brewers' Almanack 1971", page 83.
“The Brewing Industry, a Guide to Historical Records” by Lesley Richmond & Alison Turton.

Flowers Breweries Ltd. (part one)

I’m returning to Flowers. Mostly because I found a great article about their acquisition by J.W. Green of Luton.

But I’ve a deeper reason, too. Because it demonstrates something about the process of amalgamation which left the UK with seven large brewing groups (the Big Six) dominating the industry. It was by no means a foregone conclusion who would triumph and some of the early frontrunners ended up as fodder. Flowers is a good example of the latter.

When J.W. Green bought Flower & Sons in 1954, it created a substantial group, one of the largest in the country. Here are some details:

“£10m Brewery Centre
LUTON TO BE H.Q. OF HUGE MERGER
Plans For "Importing” Flower’s Bitter Beer
LUTON will be the headquarters of a new £10,000,000 brewery group as a result of the merging of J. W. Green, Ltd., the Luton brewers, and Flower and Sons, of Stratford-on-Avon.

Terms of the merger announced this week show that the deal will be on a share exchange basis. It is also proposed to change the name of the J. W. Green Group of companies to Flowers Breweries, Ltd., but the Luton brewery will retain its identity as J. W. Green, Ltd.

The terms are to come before an extraordinary general meeting of the two companies later this month.

The Luton Brewery controls about 1,100 licensed houses, and Flowers some 400.

In the letter of offer sent to shareholders, the chairman J. W. Green, Ltd., Mr. Bernard Dixon, says that the Luton Brewery is now working to full capacity, and further extensions now would be extremely costly. Flowers Brewery, he states, is particularly well equipped, and has ample capacity for development without major expense. About £500,000 has been spent on the brewery since the war.

Since 1948 J. W. Green. Ltd. has acquired seven breweries in different parts of the country, and the merger will create one of the biggest units in the brewing industry.

Well-known brands of bottled beers from Luton will be sent further afield. and Flowers famous bitter will be “imported" into this area. Subsidiary companies of the group will gradually lose their identity.”
Luton News and Bedfordshire Chronicle - Thursday 04 March 1954, page 9.

1,500 pubs would have been one of the largest estates at the time.  And when Whitbread got their hands on them, it formed a sizeable part of their estate. This should put that number into some context:

UK pub ownership 1974 - 1989
Bewery	UK Breweries	% beer sales	On Licences (1974)	% On Licences	On Licences (1989)
Bass Charrington	12	20	9,256	8.15%	7,300
Allied Breweries	7	17	7,665	6.75%	6,000
Whitbread	19	13	7,865	6.92%	6,500
Watney/Grand Met	8	12	5,946	5.23%	6,100
Scottish & Newcastle	3	11	1,678	1.48%	2,300
Courage	8	9	5,921	5.21%	5,100
Guinness	1	9	0	0	0
Total Big Seven	58	91	38,331	33.7%	33,300
Others	89	9	13,800	12.1%
Tied Trade			52,131	45.9%
Free Trade			61,498	54.1%
Total	147	100	113,629
Source:
“The Brewing Industry, a Guide to Historical Records” by Lesley Richmond & Alison Turton.
Notes:
No. breweries and % beer sales 1976
No. on licences 1974

The total number of on licences in the table is a bit deceptive as it includes restaurants and clubs as well as pubs. In 1974 the number of pub licences in the UK was 70,495*.

Building a pub estate was what it was all about back then. About the only way to realistically increase sales was to acquire more tied houses. As most pubs were owned by breweries, buying breweries was the simplest way get hold of more.

Often the brewery itself wasn’t required and was quickly closed. Which wasn’t the case here. It sounds as if J.W. Green was having capacity problems and Flowers nice, modern brewery would come in handy.

I suspect Flowers may have had a better reputation than J.W. Green. Why else call the combined company Flowers Breweries Ltd.? That Flowers Bitter was to be sold in Green’s other houses implies it had a good name.

Too much goodness in the article – and too much other Flowers and J.W. Green stuff – for a single post. Next time some more details of the merger and of the other breweries absorbed into the group. Plus its eventual fate.



* 2011 Statistical Handbook of the BBPA, page 74.

The Big Seven

No, it's not the title of a spaghetti western. Those of you of more tender years may never have heard of the seven brewing companies that used to control the production and sale of beer in Britain.

Between them, these companies owned a third of Britain's pubs and produced more than 90% of Britain's beer. Back in the 1970's and 1980's. With the capitulation of Scottish & Newcastle to the advances of Heineken and Carlsberg, the last survivor of the Big Seven is slipping into history. It's a reminder of the temporary nature of most commercial success.

Here are all the gory details:


How long will brewing's current giants survive? Multinationals like Inbev, Heineken, Carlsberg, SABMiller. Not as long as you might imagine, I suspect.