Proactive Investors - Greene King (LON:GNK), the UK pub giant, is shutting down its two-century-old brewery in Bury St Edmunds in a move away from traditional ales to fizzier craft beers.
A new £40 million site will be built in the town, with a focus on brewing craft beers, which it hopes will attract the attention of a younger audience.
Most of Greene King’s brewing will take place at the new location, shifting from the town’s 200-year-old Westgate Brewery.
Demand for cask ales, which are served at room temperature and are significantly less carbonated than other beers, has dropped since the pandemic, with the industry’s value going from £1.2 billion to £973 million.
Aware of this, Greene King is now looking to follow new trends.
Nick Mackenzie, the group’s chief executive officer, said: “We’re obviously designing [the new brewery] to allow for changes in customer trends, to allow us to have a significant cask element, but also over time to be able to have an equally significant craft presence with modern beers.”
Craft beers Flint Eye, a dry hopped larger, and session IPA Level Head were launched by Greene King in 2022 and represented the company’s first attempt at craft beers.
Mackenzie added: “We know things can change over time. So we’ve tapped into supporting low and no [alcohol], we’ve tapped into some more craft type beers that we historically didn’t do.
“But we’re maintaining a view that cask ales are really high quality with good provenance in terms of the ingredients within those beers. That will tap into a younger generation in time, but that’s gonna take time for us to get there.”
Greene King’s new site is expected to take three years to be completed before it can begin brewing.