Columbia Distributing, one of the largest beverage wholesalers in the U.S., today announced it would acquire Oregon City’s General Distributors for an undisclosed sum. The transaction, which is set to close on March 31, will add approximately 3 million cases to a multi-state Columbia business that surpassed 62 million cases in 2016.
2017 was historically bad for U.S. brewers, who shipped 3.8 million fewer barrels of beer than the previous year, according to the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau’s (TTB) unofficial estimate of domestic tax paid shipments. According to industry trade association the Beer Institute (BI) — which represents the interests of all brewers and importers and publishes the TTB’s monthly estimates — U.S. beer companies shipped about 170 million barrels of beer in 2017, compared to nearly 174 million barrels in 2016.
When Baxter Brewing opened inside of the 168-year-old Bates Mill Complex in Lewiston, Maine, in 2011, the state did not allow breweries to sell beer directly to drinkers for on-premise consumption. State laws loosened in 2012, but Baxter – which is ranked as the third-largest brewery in Maine — had already dedicated the vast majority of its facility to production.
Following last year’s sale of Asheville’s Wicked Weed to Anheuser-Busch InBev, 23 North Carolina breweries have banded together to form the Charlotte Independent Brewers Alliance (CIBA), a non-profit membership group aimed at distinguishing local beer and cider makers from their competitors.
In this week’s Press Clips: Buffalo Wild Wings tests alcohol delivery in California; Old Town settles its trademark dispute with the city of Portland; a new study says alcohol sales lag in medical marijuana states; and more.
New York-based private equity firm Verus Investment Partners has sold the 156-year-old Pittsburgh Brewing Company to an undisclosed buyer. Specific financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
San Diego’s Ballast Point Brewing will open the first on-site brewery in Anaheim’s downtown Disney District at Disneyland Resort this fall. The Disney taproom is the seventh Ballast Point location in Southern California — and first in Orange County — for the Constellation Brands-owned craft brewery. The move is part of the beer company’s ongoing strategy to grow the Ballast Point brand through local outposts both in California and across the country.
After growing two percent in 2017, Canarchy Craft Brewery Collective – a consortium of beer companies formed by Oskar Blues and Fireman Capital Partners following investments in Cigar City Brewing, Perrin Brewing and Utah Brewers Cooperative – has brought in a pair of C-level executives to “develop necessary and scalable infrastructure” within the organization.
In an effort to combat the influence Texas wholesalers wield with local lawmakers, the state’s craft brewers guild has launched its own political action committee, called CraftPAC. In a press release, the Texas Craft Brewers Guild said the goal of CraftPAC would be to overturn “archaic, anti-competitive beer laws” that have “had a chilling effect on the industry’s growth.”
BeerBoard, the management platform behind digital menu displays at on-premise retailers such as Buffalo Wild Wings, Tilted Kilt and World of Beer, recently reviewed data from more than 50,000 draft lines and found that craft beer share grew by two percent in 2017.
After two decades of steady growth, Upland Brewing is taking a two-pronged approach to expansion in 2018. The brewery, ranked by the Brewers Association as the third largest beer company in Indiana, not only plans to dig deeper in its home state, but also expand distribution of its wood-aged and sour beers to a handful of new U.S. markets this year.
North American Breweries this week announced that Kris Sirchio, who has served as CEO since 2013, would step down. Adrian Lachowski, the general manager of Florida Ice and Farm Co.’s (FIFCO) Central American beer and FMB business, will take over as CEO in early February, the company said via a press release.
In this week’s Last Call: Smuttynose’s owners comment on their brewery’s pending auction; the FBI investigates an Ohio equipment supplier accused of defrauding several breweries; Southern Tier announces plans for a downtown Cleveland brewery and taproom; and more.
California’s Mendocino Brewing Co. and New York’s Olde Saratoga Brewing Co. have shuttered, impacting the operations of several other small companies who also produced beer at those facilities. The shutdown comes as the Indian government moves to extradite billionaire Vijay Mallya, who owns the two breweries, from London on fraud and money laundering charges in excess of $1 billion.
