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A US brewery and cannabis producer has struck a £33mn deal to buy BrewDog’s brands, brewing facilities and some of its UK pubs in a cut-price deal for the struggling craft beer company.
The Tilray Brands deal, announced on Monday, covers 11 of BrewDog’s UK bars, including its Waterloo flagship. A further 38 sites will close immediately, leading to 484 job losses.
The tens of thousands of retail investors, or “equity punks”, who invested more than £75mn in BrewDog through crowdfunding between 2009 and 2021, will be left empty-handed.
Tilray said it expected BrewDog’s assets would deliver about $200mn in annual revenues.
A person close to the company said Tilray would seek to return BrewDog to its original focus on craft beer after the company lost direction pursuing unrelated ventures.
“Our priority is to refocus BrewDog on the craft beer excellence that made it beloved in the first place and strategically invest to return the operations to profitable growth,” said Tilray chief executive Irwin Simon.
Tilray said it was separately negotiating to acquire BrewDog’s assets, which could include both pubs and breweries in the US and Australia.
AlixPartners had been coordinating talks with various potential buyers of BrewDog, including Danish brewer Royal Unibrew and co-founder James Watt.
The consultancy said no offer was made at any stage of the sale process that would have preserved BrewDog in its entirety.
“In Tilray, we have secured a purchaser with a passion for craft brewing who will be an excellent custodian and sponsor of the business,” said Clare Kennedy, a partner at AlixPartners.
BrewDog, once at the forefront of the UK’s craft-brewing boom, last month appointed AlixPartners to run a restructuring process, blaming a “challenging economic climate” and “sustained macro headwinds”.
The company, which was founded near Aberdeen in 2007, tapped into the growing market for craft beers and expanded rapidly, drawing in drinkers with offbeat beverage branding such as Elvis Juice and Punk IPA.
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However, its reputation was scarred in 2021 by employees’ claims of a “toxic” work environment and the company struggled to cope with Covid-enforced pub closures and rising competition.
Sales growth at BrewDog ground to a halt and it reported a fifth consecutive annual loss of £36.7mn for 2024.
Ahead of the sale, BrewDog had already begun to trim its portfolio, last month halting production of gin and vodka at its Aberdeenshire distillery and selling a Scottish rewilding estate it had acquired last year.