A pint of Old Bandwagon-Jumper please, barman!
SABMiller plc (SBMRY) said Friday it’s buying Meantime, the largest craft brewer in London, in the latest example of global brewing giants snapping up the minnows who are draining away their market share.
The deal, for an undisclosed sum, is the first-ever acquisition of a U.K.-brewer for SABMiller, but adds to a growing portfolio of brewers that the company has already put together in the U.S. through its ‘craft and import’ arm Tenth and Blake. That portfolio includes Wisconsin-based Leinenkugel’s, Colorado-based Blue Moon and Crispin Ciders in California.
The logic for the acquisition is the same as in the U.S.. In a national market that grew by less than 1% last year, Meantime’s sales grew 58%. Growth has accelerated since the company completed a state-of-the-art brewery in 2010. A spokesman for SABMiller told Fortune that the intention is to keep the existing management in place and grow the brands beyond their local base.
The acquisition includes Meantime’s retail sites, including the Tasting Rooms and the brewery shop in the district of Greenwich in south-east London, along with the Greenwich Union pub, pop-up Beerbox pub, and the Brewery Fresh tank beer concept, which is now in 26 pubs across the city.
The deal rounds off a heady couple of weeks for the U.K.’s independent brewers. Scotland’s biggest independent Brewdog earlier this week raised $7.8 million in less than three weeks via the crowdfunding scheme Equity for Punks. The owners celebrated by dropping taxidermy ‘fat cats’ from a helicopter above the City of London in a dig at the despised bankers they managed to circumvent.
Others have been less successful. Camden Town Brewery, based in north London, tried to crowdsource funding for a new brewery through the Crowdcube platform, but ended up selling a stake at a lower valuation to a private Belgian brewer.
