Cameron's Brewery

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Camerons Brewery Ltd.
legal form Limited Company
founding 1865
Seat Hartlepool , UK
management David Soley
Number of employees 252 (2015)
sales 60,890,000 GBP (2015)
Branch brewery
Website www.cameronsbrewery.com

The Camerons Brewery is a company in Hartlepool that the local Lions Brewery operates. In 2012, 900,000 barrels of beer were produced.

history

Beginnings

William Waldon (1805-1854), a farmer from Gainford , founded the Lion Brewery here in Stranton (now part of West Hartlepool) in 1852. After Waldon's death in 1854, the brewery went to his widow Jane. In 1865 John William Cameron was hired to run the brewery. In 1872 he leased the brewery for 21 years. The brewery was rebuilt in 1875 and expanded one year later in 1876. Another new building followed in 1892. When the lease expired in 1893, Cameron bought the brewery from the Waldons for £ 34,442. In 1894, the company went public . In 1895 the Brunswick Brewery in Hartlepool with around 80 pubs was taken over and closed in 1898. In 1897 the Lion Brewery was expanded. The capacity was now 130,000 barrels per year. In 1899 Cameron began bottling mineral water.

Growth from 1910

In 1910, the Heslop's Grange Brewery in Stockton with 28 pubs was acquired. During the First World War , the brewery was damaged by German grenades in 1915. In 1920 the founder Watson Cameron died. Successors in the management of the brewery were AJ Morgan and HJ Hewlett. In 1922, Watson's son, John Watson Cameron, joined the company. In 1935 he became chairman and managing director. In 1953 a majority stake in John J. Hunt was acquired, which operates the Ebor Brewery in York and the Scarborough & Whitby Breweries. This was followed in 1959 by the takeover of West Auckland Brewery and in 1961 by Russell & Wrangham of Malton Brewery. In 1971 John Martin Cameron took over the management.

Loss of independence

In January 1974, Ellerman Lines , a major British shipping company, acquired a 25% stake in the Cameron Breweries. A year later, in 1975, Ellerman Lines acquired the majority of the company in order to become more independent of the declining shipping industry. From 1980 onwards, brewed under license from the Dortmund Actien brewery , Hansa Lager . Camerons invested £ 2 million in brewery equipment to enable bottom fermented beers to be brewed. The brewery's sales in 1981 were £ 51 million. The market share was 1% in the entire British beer market. Parent company Ellerman Lines was bought in 1983 by investors David and Frederick Barclay for £ 45 million. They split the company and wanted to sell the brewery division to Scottish & Newcastle for £ 45 million . The British Monopolies and Mergers Commission forbade the sale. In 1985 Cameron already held 5% of the UK beer market.

In 1988 the Barclay brothers were finally able to sell the Ellerman brewing business to the Brent Walker concern for £ 248 million. In 1989 around 400,000 barrels were brewed with a capacity of 500,000 barrels.

In 1992, the heavily indebted Brent Walker sold the brewery and part of the pubs to Wolverhampton & Dudley (W&D) for £ 18.7 million. The remainder of the real estate and pub holdings were spun off from Brent Walker into the Pubmaster group and sold in 1996 for a total of £ 171.3 million.

W&D cut staff, the workforce shrank from 360 to 120, and parts of the brewery were shut down after the license brewing contract with Labatt had been terminated.

In 1997 the licensed brewing business was resumed with the production of Foster's Lager . In the period that followed, W&D invested heavily in the brewery. In 1998 new fermentation and filtration plants were put into operation for 1 million pounds and in 1999 500,000 pounds were invested in reactivating the disused brewery parts. The space was needed in order to be able to comply with the license agreements that had been won for the production of Harp-Lager, Heineken and Kronenbourg .

Privately owned again

David Soley, owner of Castle Eden Brewery in Hartlepool, took over Camerons in April 2002 for £ 35 million. He completely relocated his operations to Cameron. In 2002 the license agreement with Kronenbourg was extended and in 2003 a new bottling line went into operation for 500,000 pounds. The brewery was also expanded to include a microbrewery. From 2008 the capacity was expanded to up to 1,000,000 barrels. Under contract, Cameron Kronenbourg 1664, Foster's and John Smith's Bitter will brew under license until 2019. Since the end of 2016, the brewery has been brewing the Motörhead Röad Crew beer in collaboration with the band Motörhead .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Financials , at www.duedil.com , accessed on May 14, 2016
  2. ↑ a b c Building the brand , at www.morningadvertiser.co.uk , accessed May 14, 2016.
  3. ↑ Cameron - The lion roars again , at www.beer-pages.com , accessed May 14, 2016.
  4. ^ Cameron's beating the failing market. , Evening Gazette, September 28, 2008 , accessed May 14, 2016.
  5. ↑ Camerons Motörhead collaboration beer launched , at www.cameronsbrewery.com , accessed on December 23, 2016.

Coordinates: 54 ° 40 ′ 53.8 ″  N , 1 ° 12 ′ 46 ″  W.