Hardys takeover hurts British beer

Jonathan Webster, the managing director of Hardys & Hansons in Nottingham, says: "ale lovers will get a better deal" from his company's takeover, as his brands will go on sale in Greene King pubs.

Presumably this fellow also believes in the Tooth Fairy and the Easter Bunny: I hate to disillusion him, but his brands are destined for the knackers' yard.

On the day the Hardys takeover was announced I happened to be driving through Essex and passed a pub branded as Ridley's, another brewery taken over in July 2005 and rapidly closed by Greene King. Tables at the front of the pub had attractive umbrellas to protect drinkers from the sun.

The umbrellas bore a familiar green and white logo for Greene King IPA. As soon as the takeover was complete, Ridley's IPA, a splendid beer and infinitely preferable to the Greene King version, was axed. Drinkers in Essex lost a popular local beer.

The remaining Ridley's beers have all but disappeared, too. I was told that a few Ridley's beers, including the premium Old Bob, would survive but in less than a year they have become seasonal brews and will disappear completely in a year or two.

Greene King is interested in big brands. It has kept Old Speckled Hen and Ruddles County as regular beers as they have clout and are well known to drinkers. Ridley's had the misfortune to be a smallish brewery confined to one part of Essex. It brewed delicious beers but few people knew about them.

Hardys & Hansons has the same problem. Until the 1980s, its strength lay in brewing keg beer for miners' pubs and clubs. When that market disappeared, Hardys switched its attention to the cask versions of its mild and bitter but, in common with Ridley's ales, they were local beers for local people.

It launched an excellent premium ale, Classic, in the 1990s but that disappeared when the company acquired the world-famous Olde Trip to Jerusalem pub in Nottingham and brewed a beer called Olde Trip. A beer produced primarily for one pub doesn't ring the marketing bells.

It's big brands and lots and lots of pubs that ring the chimes at Greene King. Now it can add a further 268 Hardys pubs to its giant, national train set and it will have a substantial foothold in a region dominated by its arch rival, Wolverhampton & Dudley.

Greene King now controls a vast and sprawling pub estate of 2,700 and its growth is likely to trigger further action from W&D to buy more breweries and pubs in order to safeguard its market position.

The result will be a pub trade increasingly dominated by giant pubcos and two national brewers with a handful of heavily-promoted brands. In some parts of Britain, if your preferred tipple is cask-conditioned beer then, the choice all too often is Greene IPA or nothing. To Essex, Cambridgeshire, Bedfordshire, Norfolk, Suffolk and the Thames Valley you can now add Nottinghamshire.

The man with the chisel can add a new name to the headstone in the brewery graveyard. Hardys & Hansons will follow other much-loved family breweries that have disappeared in recent years.

Greene King has made no comment about the future of the Nottingham brewery. The workers at the Kimberley site will be desperately concerned for their futures and their jobs. I don't want to add to their distress by suggesting it is inevitable their brewery will close.

But they and their trade unions should be aware that, with the exception of Belhaven in Scotland, which offers a trading post in a separate country, Greene King's track record is one of closing plants and concentrating production at its massive Legoland brewery in Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk.

The loss of Hardys & Hansons as a regional brewer is desperately depressing. The strength and appeal of British beer lies in its choice and diversity. Even if you think Greene King IPA is the best beer in the world - and I can recommend a good brain surgeon - there will be times when you might prefer a different brew to sample.

Greene King and W&D are closing down that choice and diversity. If Jonathan Webster disagrees, perhaps he would care to join me for a pint of Ridley's IPA in a pub in Essex.