The first bad news was the sale of North Carolina-based Wicked Weed to Anheuser-Busch. Some, (I include myself), assumed the big boys would stay fairly quiet on the acquisition front after MegaBrew was finalized and given apparent volatility in the industry. Not so.
Wicked Weed is evidently a bit of an odd duck. They've grown fast since opening in 2012 and expect to produce 40,000 barrels this year. They package 85 or so beers annually and their flagship is an IPA (Pernicious), But sours make up 40 percent of their dollar sales. Yup.
Wicked does something like 35 percent of its sales in North Carolina, and also distributes to a handful of other states, including Georgia, Massachusetts, Colorado and parts of Texas. They will certainly expand that footprint as they extend capacity and gradually get immersed in the AB network.
There's a bit of an alignment smash-up coming, say industry sources. It turns out most of Wicked Weed's distribution network, including in North Carolina, is non-AB. That has the makings of a nice little disaster as AB works to align Wicked with its network. Good stuff.
Heineken and Lagunitas
The announcement that Heineken has fully acquired Lagunitas wasn't a huge surprise. Things have evidently gone pretty well since Heineken became 50 percent owner in the company back in 2015. This is the consummation of that momentum.
When considering the deal, it pays to ignore anything Lagunitas founder Tony Magee says or has said. When the original deal was announced two years ago, Magee said he would never sell the whole company to Heineken. So much for that. And Magee's credibility.
The new arrangement is mainly an international play. According to industry sources, Lagunitas will continue to operate as a separate business entity in the US. Magee will stay on as head of the company and will serve in an advisory role on Heineken's global team.
What's going to happen is Heineken will ramp up the expansion of Lagunitas into new markets around the world. That business has grown dramatically during the past year and has huge untapped potential. That's what motivated Heineken to pull the trigger on full acquisition.
Some craft beer geeks won't look at Lagunitas quite the same going forward. But the reality is, Heineken isn't in the same league as Anheuser-Busch, particularly in the US. It doesn't operate a vast distribution network here or have a collection of craft breweries. No comparison, really.
Craft Brew Alliance
Our friends at the Portland-based Craft Brew Alliance announced their Q1 results late last week. There was good and bad news.
The good news is that Kona was up 14 percent for the quarter, and continues to drag the company forward. CEO Andy Thomas also said Widmer is growing again in its home market, though overall shipments of both Widmer and Redhook were down.
The biggest bombshell was news that the agreement with Pabst to contract brew and eventually purchase the Woodinville brewery has been terminated. That means the brewery will close and be put up for sale within a couple of months.
Realistically, there wasn't much of a chance the purchase was ever going to happen. It's an antiquated brewery and was/is overvalued on the CBA balance sheet. Selling it will be a chore because the buyer, assuming one steps up, will also have to invest in making the place usable.
Of course, Pabst's position has become tenuous. It brewed mostly Rainier Mountain Ale in Woodinville. But the launch of that brand was botched out of the gate and expected volumes never materialized. Brewing capacity wasn't being used. Then Pabst got itself ensnared in lawsuits over distributor terminations (covered here last week) in Washington. A nice little mess.
The Woodinville closure means more CBA employees will be laid off or re-purposed within the company. Reports put the number at about a dozen. That's on top of the 15-20 who were laid off last year due to lower than expected Pabst volumes and declining production of CBA brands there.
In fact, most of the CBA's Woodinville production moved to the more efficient brewery in Portland. That rush to efficiency and greater profits is a slipper slope. The CBA will soon move some production to AB's Fort Collins plant to improve efficiency. That will mainly affect City Brewing in Memphis, but a reliable source tells me layoffs in Portland are imminent. We shall see.
On the heels of the CBA's Q1 report and the sale of Wicked Weed, there was renewed speculation on the possibility of AB completing a full purchase of the CBA. As noted above, the Wicked Weed sale has some people thinking more deals are in the wind. And maybe they are. Or not.
As discussed here numerous times, Anheuser-Busch covets Kona, but has no interest in Widmer or Redhook. It's hard to imagine a scenario in which the CBA strips Kona from its portfolio and sells it to AB separately. So it looks to me like the CBA will at some point be purchased and become a subsidiary of Anheuser-Busch, with Kona as the crown jewel.
Motivating Factors
For those who want a better understanding of craft brewery acquisitions, there was a fine article exploring that topic last week. Author Chris Herron suggests the primary motivation has more to do with preserving macro brand equity than with wanting to be in craft beer. That's vaguely at odds with what most of us have generally assumed.
Herron's article is terrific stuff and required reading. Trust me.
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