Molson Coors acquires Detroit brewer Atwater
USA | There goes another one. Detroit’s Atwater brewery has sold itself to Tenth and Blake Beer Company, the US craft beer division of brewer Molson Coors, for an undisclosed sum, media reported on 22 January 2020.
Atwater is the first US craft brewery that Tenth and Blake has purchased since 2016, when it bought three small producers – Georgia’s Terrapin Brewing, Texas’ Revolver Brewing and Oregon’s Hop Valley Brewing – in the span of a few weeks.
Tenth and Blake’s portfolio also includes the Saint Archer Brewing, AC Golden Brewing and the Leinenkugel brands.
Atwater was founded in 1997 and was fully acquired by CEO Mark Rieth in 2005. Mr Rieth said that the company grew by single digits last year and produced “just over” 23,000 barrels of beer. Most of that growth must have come from Atwater’s recently launched line of hard seltzers, which implies its beer sales were flat.
“As a regional brewery competing with 8,000 other breweries, we were very happy to grow,” Mr Rieth was quoted as saying.
Atwater was ranked by the Brewers Association as the fifth-largest craft brewer in Michigan in 2018, trailing Grand Rapids-based Founders Brewing (560,000 barrels beer), Kalamazoo-based Bell’s Brewery (470,000 barrels), Bellaire-based Short’s Brewing (46,000 barrels) and Holland-based New Holland Brewing (42,000 barrels).
Three of those aforementioned brands – Founders, Short’s and New Holland – have all sold stakes or struck partnerships with larger players. Founders is 90 percent owned by Spain’s Mahou San Miguel, and Heineken-owned Lagunitas purchased a 20 percent stake in Short’s in 2017. New Holland has a marketing and distribution arrangement with brewer Pabst.
Media say that Atwater’s beers are currently distributed in about a dozen states, after Mr Reith pulled the brand out of several markets in the past decade as competition within the craft beer segment began to heat up.
Mr Rieth said the partnership with Molson Coors will help Atwater get its beers into the hands of more consumers. The current management team will continue to lead day-to-day operations, a press release noted. Molson Coors is also expected to keep Atwater’s 95 employees, according to the website Crain’s Detroit.
