MillerCoors today announced that Tenth and Blake Beer Company, its craft beer and import division, has reached an agreement to acquire a majority stake in Terrapin Beer Company. The purchase builds on a pre-existing relationship between the two companies: MillerCoors, via Tenth and Blake, had previously acquired a minority (less than 25 percent) stake in the Athens, GA-based craft brewery in early 2012.
U.S. hop production is set to increase by double-digits once again in 2016, according to a new report from the Hop Growers of America (HGA). According to the group, more than 53,200 acres of hops were strung for harvest in the U.S. this year, which represents more than 8,300 new acres – an 18.5 percent increase over last year.
If you’ve worked in any industry for more than 30 years, it’s safe to assume that you’re an expert in that field. So by that logic, Harpoon Brewery co-founder Dan Kenary, who started the Boston-based company with partners Rich Doyle and George Ligeti in 1986, is a bona fide beer business expert. In a wide-ranging interview with Kenary, the longtime beer executive shares with Brewbound the business lessons he’s learned over the last three decades and thoughts on how the craft category will continue to evolve over the next few years.
There’s more private equity money flowing into the craft brewing industry, this time via consumer products-focused firm VMG Consumer Partners and popular San Diego beermaker Stone Brewing. VMG — which specializes in food and beverage investments and has purchased stakes in entrepreneurial ventures like KIND Healthy Snacks, Pirate’s Booty, Justin’s and Spindrift, among others — will invest $89.5 million into a recently formed limited partnership called “VMG Stone Brewing Coinvestment,” according to a June SEC filing.
In this week’s distribution roundup: Colorado’s Left Hand Brewing begins distributing in Wyoming, the 37th state where its products are sold; California’s Knee Deep Brewing Company plans to enter Kansas this summer and San Diego’s Alesmith Brewing Company will soon begin selling its beers in Sin City.
The Beer Institute, a Washington D.C.-based trade association representing domestic and international beer companies, has launched a new initiative asking brewers large and small to display caloric and nutritional information on individual products, packaging and websites. Calling it the “Brewers Voluntary Disclosure Initiative,” the BI is encouraging its 44 brewer and importer members – as well as more than 4,000 non-member craft breweries — to voluntarily include a serving facts statement on their products, as well as disclose ingredients on either the label or secondary packaging by 2020.
Longtime Sierra Nevada brewmaster Steve Dresler will retire in early 2017, the beer company announced last week. Under Dresler’s direction, Sierra Nevada won eight World Beer Cup awards and 31 Great American Beer Festival medals, according to the release. Sierra Nevada said it has already begun the search for a new brewmaster and that Dresler would help train the yet-to-be named replacement.
In this week’s edition of Last Call: Olde Mecklenburg Brewery embarks on a multi-million dollar expansion and launches an ad campaign; Stone Brewing taps its first Richmond-brewed beer; Appalachian Mountain Brewery updates shareholders and the Beer Institute reports import volumes through May.
Hoping to emulate the early success of his San Diego-based beer company Saint Archer Brewing, which was purchased by MillerCoors last September, entrepreneur Josh Landan is doubling down on the beverage business. Landan, together with current Saint Archer vice president Jeff Hansson, is preparing to launch Villager Goods, a line of food and beverage products backed by many of the same action sports figures who initially funded Saint Archer.
63 percent of all beer sold on draft in Oregon last year was made by an in-state brewery, according to a new report from the Oregon Brewers Guild. The non-profit trade association last week reported that Oregon residents drank more than 650,000 barrels of local beer in 2015, more than 22 percent of all beer consumed in the state.
Boulevard Brewing today announced plans to expand its sales footprint, adding new distribution in Delaware, Connecticut and Pennsylvania. Boulevard beers will begin hitting the new markets in late July, the company said.
After receiving final approval from the Competition Tribunal in South Africa, Anheuser-Busch InBev is one step closer to finalizing its $107 billion takeover of SABMiller. South African regulators cleared the way for the tie-up on Thursday, and A-B InBev CEO Carlos Brito said the company is “on track” to finalize the merger in the second half of 2016.
What a week for craft dealmaking. Yesterday, Lagunitas Brewing announced a string of investments into three smaller breweries that are intended to help the country’s sixth largest craft outfit “expand” the way it participates in local markets; Oklahoma’s Krebs Brewing Company has purchased Tulsa-based Prairie Artisan Ales, a small but well-known craft label amongst beer aficionados and another small deal in the Pacific Northwest will see the intellectual property and select brewing assets of Seattle-based Hilliard’s Beer LLC. transferred to the smaller Odin Brewing Company in Tukwila, Wash.
In just 40 months, popular Boston-based craft brewery Trillium has gone from a hard to obtain brand to one that is currently producing at a run rate of about 20,000 barrels. But the uptick in production hasn’t made the company’s beer any easier to find around town. The brewery, which celebrated its third anniversary in March, expects to produce about 12,000 barrels in 2015. That’s up from just 2,500 barrels one year ago.
