Beer Monopoly turns to craft brewers
It’s a cruel world. For years, brewer SABMiller was talked up as the ultimate takeover target for AB-InBev and there was very little they could do to silence this kind of unwanted speculation.
The beer monopoly game among the world’s biggest brewers seems to have run its course, at least for the time being. But AB-InBev’s money still seeks a home. And it’s finding it where the new growth is: among U.S. craft brewers.
Now that craft brewers are attracting AB-InBev’s attention, plenty may find out what it’s like being the butt of industry gossip.
Following AB-InBev’s purchase of three craft brewers in the space of merely one year, bar stool strategists over in the U.S. are finally convinced that the leading brewer in the country will gobble up another craft brewer.
Well, it does not take much insight to subscribe to this view. However, it takes some cheek to actually come up with a list of potential takeover targets among craft brewers, as did the website MarketWatch on 12 February 2015: http://www.marketwatch.com/story/anheuser-busch-should-buy-these-craft-beer-brewers-next-2015-02-12?page=1.
Listed under the provocative headline “Anheuser-Busch should buy these craft beer brewers next”, are five names:
- Victory Brewing Co from Downingtown Pennsylvania;
- Long Trail Brewing Co from Bridgewater Corners, Vermont;
- Devils Backbone Brewing Co from Roseland, Virginia;
- Ska Brewing from Durango, Colorado;
- Highland Brewing Co from Asheville, North Carolina.
The article is structured thus that it first gives the reasons why AB-InBev would want this brewery, followed by the – again assumed – reasons why the current owners might like to sell or respectively why they would not want to sell.
Hopefully, MarketWatch contacted these craft brewers on its list before releasing it so that they had time to hire some PR pros to come up with a line of defence to use on their worried customers. To ardent craft beer lovers, talk about a sale, even involuntarily, is as bad as a sale outright
