Courage Axes Berkshire Brewery
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19 February 2008
Scottish & Newcastle has announced that it is to close its Berkshire Brewery by the side of M4 just outside
Reading by 2010. S&N is currently the subject of an agreed bid by Heineken and Carlsberg. When that deal goes through
Heineken will take over all S&N's operations in the UK and the company has kept the Dutch brewing giant informed of its
plans. The Berkshire brewery built in 1979 is capable of producing 7 m hectolitres a year (about 13% of the UK total beer
production) and is currently churning out about 6m hectolitres. Last year S&N closed the bottling plant at Berkshire and also
announced that it was transferring 3m hectolitres of production to the Coors brewery.
Iain Loe CAMRA's Research hand Information manager said that "in the 1970s Courage closed its breweries in
London, Plymouth and Reading and concentrated its production in a mega-keggery by the side of the M4. This was to be the
shape of things to come. Now less than 30 years afterwards all those plans have come to nought. No one it would appear wants
the mass of fizzy yellow liquid that the state-of-the-art plant could produce. Few will mourn the closure of this steel and
glass white elephant; the last remains of the Courage brewing empire founded originally by John Courage in 1787" Sic transit
gloria mundi.
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