Marston’s and Carlsberg: Is the future in beer or pubs?

United Kingdom | Although Marston’s patching up with Carlsberg smacks of a fire sale, the general view is that the deal has more to do with London’s brewer Fuller’s quitting brewing, than with the current lockdown on pubs.

Insiders say that Marston’s management is hedging its bets. Eventually, the lockdown will be lifted and pubs will reopen. So where do vertically integrated brewers like Marston’s see their future? Will it be in beer or in pubs?

They probably think that their pubs are well positioned to survive and reopen, whereas brewing beer and selling it to the free trade, where margins have been shrinking for years, seems like a losing game.

Brewery closures in the offing?

The question Carlsberg and Marston’s will need to solve is this: Do they want seven breweries, notwithstanding that some are really small? The ones they will choose to get rid of will tell us a lot about how they see the future.

The sale of Fuller’s brewing arm to Asahi in January 2019 came as a shock to medium, and medium-large brewers, who have seen their customer bases dwindle even before the pandemic. Traditional cask ale, for which Marston’s is famous, has been in trouble for a while. The category’s value and volume sales have continued to slide.

Not enough, craft brewers, many of which have had to mothball their breweries, could be in for a shakeout. Blame it on supermarkets reverting to their old habits. They may think the situation is sufficiently opaque for them to stock only a few big craft beer brands, without anyone noticing.

As to future trends, only two are certain to materialise: Cans will be big and alcopops are coming back. Except this time round they are called hard seltzers. Everything else is hugely uncertain.