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Kirin shuts West End Brewery, Adelaide.


Malter White

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The West End brewery in Thebarton will close in June 2021. West End and Southwark brands will be made interstate. I imagine not for very long as the corporates will eventually say it's no longer viable to produce the brands interstate for such a small market like SA.
What worries me the most is if my footy team the North Adelaide Roosters win the grand final this week, will their colours only adorn the brewery's chimney until June or will they remain there until the chimney is demolished? It's a tradition for the reigning premiers and runner up to have their colours hoisted on the brewery chimney.
I suspect the site will be demolished and used for apartment type housing. It's zoned in the same area as the Coke site that was closed by Coke and has been sold to developers recently.

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Not a surpise,  There are no commercial breweries in WA anymore and this just goes along with that strategy. .  Last year when I was in Tassie I was surprised to see how many interstate beers are made at Cascade Brewery, did the tour, and then transported to those interstate markets.  

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I've been thinking what a crap thing for the SA hospitality industry this is. Like all of Australia they're suffering from Covid restrictions and they are trying to pick up the shattered pieces of their industry. Rightly or wrongly, West End is a market leading beer here and if they end up deleting the brand it will only hurt pubs and clubs. Sure other brands will pick up the slack but there will be an element of drinkers who will take the attitude, "I'm not paying $10 a pint to drink 'XYZ brand' beer." It's surely going to hurt the industry.
Great news for Coopers though.

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This happened donkeys years ago with Swan brewery. Closed down after Lion bought it. Guess where the iconic (but a bit crap) Emu Export and other beers were then made? West End.

If you like any of WE beers, be prepared fro them to taste crap(per) when they move production elsewhere.

Little Creatures was never the same when Lion bought it and brewed most of it in Geelong. The pub brewery in Freo is still probably turning out a decent PA.

Lion and its owners Kirin are just pillaging Australian history for cash and pissing it up a wall.

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1 hour ago, Lab Cat said:

Little Creatures and Gage Roads are not craft breweries.

I suppose there has to be some sort of threshold when a craft brewery becomes successful enough and becomes commercial.  However, you know exactly what I mean Lab Cat.  Would mega swill brewer be a better description for you and seeing that Little creatures is owned by Kirin I suppose it is a mega swill brewer. 

 

Edited by MartyG1525230263
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17 minutes ago, Ben 10 said:

You'd be hard pressed to do that.

Some people have a soft spot for old style megaswill, we grew up with it. I grab an Emu Export occasionally and realise it's probably only still as bad as modern hyped and over priced swill.

I have good memories of XXXX. I used to drink gallons of the stuff back in the UK, the import cans. Either I had a crap palate or the beer got bad. I do remember it was far better any lager pulled from a pub tap. Fosters was always crap. Whatever Hogan got paid, wasn't nearly enough. He created an industry there for CUB.

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This keeps happening. Breweries are sold off to international corporations and, despite the promises, they are then closed and Aussies lose jobs. Note that you and I often could not own a business in the countries where the corps doing the buying are based?

Funny how they were all so profitable as to be worth buying but once the OS owners get hold of them, they get closed as 'uneconomic' and another Aussie institution goes away.

How much of Australia do we need to sell before we become strangers in a strange land and Aussies no longer exist?

Edited by Journeyman
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1 hour ago, Journeyman said:

This keeps happening. Breweries are sold off to international corporations and, despite the promises, they are then closed and Aussies lose jobs. Note that you and I often could not own a business in the countries where the corps doing the buying are based?

Funny how they were all so profitable as to be worth buying but once the OS owners get hold of them, they get closed as 'uneconomic' and another Aussie institution goes away.

How much of Australia do we need to sell before we become strangers in a strange land and Aussies no longer exist?

The consolidation of breweries will continue until we end up with one or two global mega swill brewers (such as AB InBev) & that is probably not that far away.

The counter point is the local craft beer market which has employed probably more people in brewing than have been displaced by the mega swill brewers shedding jobs. Plus the beer is a hell of alot better.

So the simple message is buy local and support the family owned/craft brewery or two down the road.

Vote with your wallet.

Cheers YB

Edited by YeastyBoy
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21 hours ago, MartyG1525230263 said:

Not a surpise,  There are no commercial breweries in WA anymore and this just goes along with that strategy. .  Last year when I was in Tassie I was surprised to see how many interstate beers are made at Cascade Brewery, did the tour, and then transported to those interstate markets.  

Yeap, Cascade is a small batch brewery.

CUB moved all the Matilda Bay Brewery stuff to Cascade Brewery. Poor WA.

Plus VB is produced there too!! Sorry Victoria.

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2 hours ago, YeastyBoy said:

The consolidation of breweries will continue until we end up with one or two global mega swill brewers

This happened with wine back a couple of decades or so. All the little vineyards got bought out until only a couple of companies owned a major share of the market. (I think one was Southport or similar name?) Any little guys refusing to go along were kinda edged out in bottleshops etc.

Then the big companies started dropping labels or producing generic junk (albeit still more palatable than say, Californian or Peruvian wines) - those 2 producers and a few others then hired in Aussie vignerons to teach them how to make wines and their local produce improved immensely.

Once the blandness of most of the wines on the shelf became evidence, small vineyards started up again and now we have a wide range of producers making excellent wines.

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3 hours ago, Journeyman said:

This happened with wine back a couple of decades or so. All the little vineyards got bought out until only a couple of companies owned a major share of the market. (I think one was Southport or similar name?) Any little guys refusing to go along were kinda edged out in bottleshops etc.

Then the big companies started dropping labels or producing generic junk (albeit still more palatable than say, Californian or Peruvian wines) - those 2 producers and a few others then hired in Aussie vignerons to teach them how to make wines and their local produce improved immensely.

Once the blandness of most of the wines on the shelf became evidence, small vineyards started up again and now we have a wide range of producers making excellent wines.

Southcorp Wines which was part of SA Brewing (West End) and then Fosters took over Southcorp as part of a growth phase. Then later Fosters decided to demerge all their businesses and concentrate on beer and sold it. I guess it all depends on who the CEO is at the time. They all think they have these great ideas but often they aren't.
It's interesting to note that Coopers cannot be taken over aggressively in this manner. I'm pretty sure after a similar take over bid by the evil Lion Nathan a decade or so ago, Coopers shareholders rejected the bid and then changed the share structure of the company into classes. Regular punters or aggressive corporations like LN could only buy lower class shares. The premium and controlling shares are held by the Cooper family and associates, ensuring the Coopers brand remains South Australian until such time the premium shareholders decide to bail out....if they choose to but I think that's unlikely.
*This is stuff I read a long time ago, so it may not be 100% accurate as I'm relying on my fragile memory.

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13 hours ago, Ben 10 said:

I do, I'll still grab a XXXX Bitter over Northern anyday.

You're not wrong. I'd even take a VB over Northern. Beers like that have set an all new low. This is what modern mass brewing serves up. They're obviously getting it right, and/or the marketing works, because they sell this rubbish.

It's clearly an aussified Corona. Another beer that I will turn down if offered.

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4 minutes ago, Lab Cat said:

You're not wrong. I'd even take a VB over Northern. Beers like that have set an all new low. This is what modern mass brewing serves up. They're obviously getting it right, and/or the marketing works, because they sell this rubbish.

It's clearly an aussified Corona. Another beer that I will turn down if offered.

Their aim is to mass market beers with lower ABV so they pay less tax. 

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1 hour ago, MUZZY said:

It's interesting to note that Coopers cannot be taken over aggressively in this manner. I'm pretty sure after a similar take over bid by the evil Lion Nathan a decade or so ago, Coopers shareholders rejected the bid and then changed the share structure of the company into classes. Regular punters or aggressive corporations like LN could only buy lower class shares. The premium and controlling shares are held by the Cooper family and associates, ensuring the Coopers brand remains South Australian until such time the premium shareholders decide to bail out....if they choose to but I think that's unlikely.
*This is stuff I read a long time ago, so it may not be 100% accurate as I'm relying on my fragile memory.

Thankfully the Coops family was smart enough to block this takeover bid.

LN are just another corporate raider that to quote employs the Wombat syndrome!!

Eats, roots & leaves...............

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15 hours ago, Ben 10 said:

I'll still grab a XXXX Bitter over Northern anyday.

In the early 1980s it was closer to 5% and you could taste the POR hops... I thought it was 4.9 but may have been 4.8%....

Looks like some other fellas care too - see the below:

image.thumb.png.3805bbeaad3bab9d9d76372b5a0f8863.png

Edited by Bearded Burbler
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2 hours ago, MUZZY said:

I'm pretty sure after a similar take over bid by the evil Lion Nathan a decade or so ago, Coopers shareholders rejected the bid and then changed the share structure of the company into classes.

44 minutes ago, YeastyBoy said:

Thankfully the Coops family was smart enough to block this takeover bid.

Have a read of the below if you are interested ; )

Coopers Family - smart + good legal team - and when it went to the Full Bench of the Federal Court fortunately for once justice prevailed... Woohoo!!!

Excerpt from an Edelmann paper below... https://cdn.hcourt.gov.au/assets/publications/speeches/current-justices/edelmanj/EdelmanJ29Oct2019.pdf

In Lion Nathan Australia Pty Ltd v Coopers Brewery Ltd a Full Court of the Federal Court of Australia held that it was permissible for the trial judge to have had regard to a superseded version of the company's articles, because they were public documents readily ascertainable by third parties, and a majority held it was permissible to have regard to the materials provided to the general meeting that voted to amend the articles that were in the nature of explanatory materials regarding the amendments, due to the small and stable shareholder group. 

Case citation below and link here:

https://iknow.cch.com.au/document/atagUio919405sl49232284/lion-nathan-australia-pty-ltd-v-coopers-brewery-ltd

Enjoy 😝

LION NATHAN AUSTRALIA PTY LTD v COOPERS BREWERY LTD, Federal Court of Australia, Full Court, 16 October 2006

 

Edited by Bearded Burbler
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So im curious about the "state based beers"

Do people in SA only drink Coopers? They are giving the markets a good shove by been major sponsors of events like the Aus open, Bathurst etc. Getting their name out there to other states.

I rarely have seen other state beers been drunk in Victoria. Aside from the obvious "Marlin beer" aimed at fisherman.

Also the information in this thread...had no idea about the LN attempt at Coopers (good on Coopers)

And the Mid strength beer to save on paying tax...brilliant move. Show how smart these big companies actually are.

Also...i always thought it was Nathan Lion... (yes well aware he is a cricketer lol)

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1 hour ago, RepSpec said:

So im curious about the "state based beers"

Do people in SA only drink Coopers? They are giving the markets a good shove by been major sponsors of events like the Aus open, Bathurst etc. Getting their name out there to other states.

I rarely have seen other state beers been drunk in Victoria. Aside from the obvious "Marlin beer" aimed at fisherman.

Also the information in this thread...had no idea about the LN attempt at Coopers (good on Coopers)

And the Mid strength beer to save on paying tax...brilliant move. Show how smart these big companies actually are.

Also...i always thought it was Nathan Lion... (yes well aware he is a cricketer lol)

I'm pretty sure up until a short time ago that West End was the market leading beer brand in SA. It may still be. However, with the corporate take over by Lion the marketing has moved away from 'local' beer and focussed on national brands like Hahn and XXXX to make the beers cheaper to produce. This has eaten into WE's market share. Over the same time I reckon Coopers have probably picked up many WE drinkers who are SA parochial.
The big companies aren't always that smart. Fosters/CUB/SABMiller/InBev or whatever they are called now dropped the ABV on VB from the original recipe 4.9% to 4.6% to save what I'm told was $20,000,000 in tax p.a. Unfortunately for them this caused a backlash among loyal VB drinkers and revenue dropped substantially and with it the alleged tax savings. They changed it back to 4.9% eventually but I'm pretty sure it irreversibly damaged their brand. It used to be the no.1 beer in Australia. I don't think it is any more.

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31 minutes ago, MUZZY said:

I'm pretty sure up until a short time ago that West End was the market leading beer brand in SA. It may still be. However, with the corporate take over by Lion the marketing has moved away from 'local' beer and focussed on national brands like Hahn and XXXX to make the beers cheaper to produce. This has eaten into WE's market share. Over the same time I reckon Coopers have probably picked up many WE drinkers who are SA parochial.
The big companies aren't always that smart. Fosters/CUB/SABMiller/InBev or whatever they are called now dropped the ABV on VB from the original recipe 4.9% to 4.6% to save what I'm told was $20,000,000 in tax p.a. Unfortunately for them this caused a backlash among loyal VB drinkers and revenue dropped substantially and with it the alleged tax savings. They changed it back to 4.9% eventually but I'm pretty sure it irreversibly damaged their brand. It used to be the no.1 beer in Australia. I don't think it is any more.

You're dead right Muzzy. I've admitted before on this forum that I've been a CUB drinker for most of my adult life. (Cut me some slack I'm old) VB changed their recipe to save money and the blokes I know who drank the stuff swore off it when that happened. The upside was I discovered Beer - good beer for the first time in my life. Cooper's Pale replaced the VB for a long time. While some of the mates never went back to the stuff. Bean Counters have made some really dumb decisions me thinks.

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40 minutes ago, Mickep said:

You're dead right Muzzy. I've admitted before on this forum that I've been a CUB drinker for most of my adult life. (Cut me some slack I'm old) VB changed their recipe to save money and the blokes I know who drank the stuff swore off it when that happened. The upside was I discovered Beer - good beer for the first time in my life. Cooper's Pale replaced the VB for a long time. While some of the mates never went back to the stuff. Bean Counters have made some really dumb decisions me thinks.

When that South African company (majority owned by a British one I think) took over CUB the rep coming to pubs in Bendigo staated the new CEO declared at a meeting of all staff that, "we don't manufacture beer, we BREW beer" and mandated VB stepped back to the original recipe. They promoted the hell out of it and many pubs then had VB on tap. It was drinkable - CD still wasn't (for me) so I guess the profit reason wasn't enough to convince them tot ake ALL their beers back to brewing across a cuple of weeks instead of 24 hours. 😄 Or maybe VB didn't gain them back the market share so they decided it wasn't worth doing for the others?

On the ABV levels - I may be confused but I seem to recall ABV of CD in bottles and large cans (the steel ones) being quite a bit higher than mega-swill beer is now, up in the high 5's and 6% level. It was back when I was a kid (60's) and family was religious so I can't recall how I got that idea. Anyone remember?

 

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