BrewDog was yesterday (2 March) bought for just £33m by US pharmaceutical giant Tilray having called in advisors in March to explore a sale.
Joint administrator AlixPartners says that no prospective bidder had put in an offer for the entire business, which included BrewDog’s brewing operations and 49 bars in the UK.
Tilray’s purchase of BrewDog includes its UK brewing operations and just 11 bars in England, Scotland and Ireland in Birmingham, Canary Wharf, Dogtap Ellon, Dublin, Edinburgh DogHouse, Lothian Road, Manchester, Paddington, Seven Dials, Tower Hill, and Waterloo.
As a result, 38 BrewDog pubs and bar in the UK have closed with immediate effect, resulting in almost 500 job losses.
BrewDog’s 18 franchise bars in the UK and internationally continue to operate as normal.
AlixPartners also says that equity holders in the brewing business will not receive a return, including those that were granted under the Equity for Punks scheme, from the transaction.
Equity for Punks was described by BrewDog as ‘a ground-breaking initiative that flipped the script on traditional crowd funding’ with investors promised ‘a slice of the brewery and share in its success and growth’. The last Equity for Punk investment round closed in 2021.
“As one would expect over the past two weeks, we have received significant interest in the BrewDog business from prospective buyers across both the trade and investment communities,” says Clare Kennedy, partner and managing director at AlixPartners.
“In Tilray, we have secured a purchaser with a passion for craft brewing who will be an excellent custodian and sponsor of the business in the months and years ahead.
“Having done so, our priority now is to support, to the fullest extent possible, those people whose roles have been made redundant, and we would ask operators within the UK leisure sector who are in a position to assist to contact us at any time.”
The full list of BrewDog’s closures
England
Basingstoke
Bath
Bournemouth
Bristol – Baldwin Street
Cambridge
Cardiff
Carlisle
Cheltenham
Exeter
London – Soho, Camden Road, Chancery Lane, Clerkenwell, Ealing, Hammersmith, Seething Lane, Tower Bridge, Wandsworth
Liverpool
Manchester – DogHouse Manchester, Manchester Outpost
Milton Keynes
Newcastle
Norwich
Nottingham
Plymouth
Reading
Southampton
Scotland
Aberdeen – Castlegate, Union Square
Edinburgh – Cowgate
Glasgow – Merchant City, Argyle Street
Inverurie
Perth
St Andrews
Stirling