Young's £100m site sale report is way off mark'

by Martyn Cornell

A report that shareholders at South London brewer Young & Co could be voting soon on a £100m bonus from the redevelopment of the company's Wandsworth brewery site has been dismissed as very wide of the mark.

Sources close to the company said the lengthy review into the future of the brewery site ­ started after proposals for its potential development first surfaced in 2003 ­ was "months rather than weeks" from being finished.

The suggestion that the feasibility study into the possible selling of the Wandsworth site ­and the decision on the relocation of the brewery elsewhere ­ was about to be completed, was made in the Mail on Sunday at the weekend. It was in the MoS that the £100m windfall figure also appeared.

But one insider said that the £100m valuation ­ a sum almost equal to the company's entire market capitalisation ­ was "not a figure the company recognises".

Instead, sources indicated that the likely sum Young's would receive for the 5.5-acre site ­ where brewing has taken place since at least 1581 ­ would be somewhere in the region of £20m to £50m.

Out of that, Young's would have to find the money to build a new brewery elsewhere. This, experts suggested, would cost at least £10m to £15m.

That figure would include land acquisition and all ancillary services even if, as one suggestion had it, the new brewery was built in the West Country, where Young's also owns pubs after acquiring the estate built up by Smiles brewery of Bristol.

The Mail on Sunday newspaper quoted Young's 83-year-old chairman, John Young, as saying: "In purely nostalgic terms, no-one would be more sad than me if this continuity were to be broken.

"But the fact must be faced that if it is in the interests of the company and its shareholders, and ultimately of our loyal customers, to build a new brewery, then that is what we must do. It's the beer that counts, not where it is produced."