Progressing with pride

Despite being a traditional family-owned brewer, Arkell's isn't afraid of change. Adrian Tierney-Jones reports

If the business of brewing and the pub trade all too often seem like a king-size game of Monopoly, then Arkell's Brewery is in with a good chance of sweeping the board. As well as owning the usual gathering of pubs, hotels and a sizeable brewing site, the company can also boast a couple of streets in its portfolio. That's something you don't get with your average craft brewery.

"Yes, we do own two streets," confirms the brewery's passionate and enthusiastic managing director James Arkell, "and also a gospel hall. The brewery sits on a big site and when we started Stratton was a separate village five miles from Swindon. As Swindon has grown, so we have developed the site."

Development started with office and business units right next door to the brewery, on land that had been unused for a long time.

"We felt that providing a range of small business units would be an ideal use for the area and of benefit to the local business community," says Arkell. "Then the old brewery house, where the head brewer used to live in days gone by, became a conference centre."

The family line

Based 20 minutes by taxi from the centre of Swindon in what was the village of Stratton and has now become a suburb, Arkell's is an archetypal family-owned regional brewery, a real case of they-don't-make-them-like-this-anymore.

The brewery is a sprawling collection of imposing stone buildings, which include

the former maltings, over which towers a massive chimney built back in the 1930s and reflecting the confidence the family then felt about the future.

In the boardroom, paintings of all previous Arkell chairmen line the walls. To cement Arkell's surviving link with the old-style beer-ocracy, James Arkell is the High Sheriff of Wiltshire and lieutenant colonel in the local TA yeomanry regiment.

There is even a family connection with the Cotswold brewery Donnington, whose owner Claude Arkell recently died - it was left to James Arkell and his father Peter. However, James is at pains to stress that "it will be run independently. We are going to bottle their beer here, but we are not selling their beer in our pubs or vice versa".

Yet this is not a self-satisfied brewery sitting back on its historical laurels, content to play the industry's version of a benevolent know-

it-all squire. Like everyone in the beer business, Arkell's has undergone many changes in the past few years, but unlike some, they have managed to weather these storms.

"Thirty years ago we had 64 pubs and three off-licences," says Arkell, whose great-great grandfather John Arkell came back from Canada and started brewing in 1843, "but now we have an estate of 102 pubs, to which we are adding all the time. These are single purchases, as we can't compete with the big pub companies. At the end of the last financial year in March, we had spent £1.7m on tenancies and managed houses."

Less is more

Inevitably, there has also been a change in brewing practices. "In 1980 we were brewing five days a week," says Arkell, "but now that is not the case." However, he stresses that they are already up 2% on their volume in the first quarter of this year.

Despite pub companies with deep pockets, Arkell is more than happy with the brewery's new properties. "We bought the Bear Hotel in Wantage, Oxon, and more recently the Lansdowne Strand Hotel in Calne, Wilts, for which we paid in excess of £1.5m. We like places like these because you get a good market bar. This means that there are more walking locals in these places, plus a good community feel."

Rooms are also important, he says: "They are good for profitability and increase the footprint of the pub."

At the moment, Arkell's has just 350 rooms sprinkled throughout its estate, but it is a growing sector. Pubs that previously didn't have any are adding them and the company has gone so far as to buy properties that adjoin a couple of their pubs (the Red Lion at Chieveley, Berks, and the Carpenters at Burghclere, Hants) so that rooms can be bolted on.

In an uncertain time for pubs, with panic about binge drinking and increased legislation (Arkell is robust about what he calls "government interference in our lives"), the brewery is refusing to stand still.

They confronted the smoke ban head-on by spending £200,000 on smoking shelters. "We had a wonderful blueprint for one," says Arkell, "and settled on a shed with a cedar tile roof. People love the look of them."

Then there's the beer. Don Bracher has been head brewer since he moved over from Morland's in Abingdon 15 years ago. He freely admits he is not the sort of man to push loads of different beers with outrageous names into the freetrade.

With 2B, they produce one of the last remaining "boys' bitters", a survivor of the time when a weak session beer reflected high volumes. As the name suggests it was also a good gateway beer for young people making the transition from soft drinks to beer. More of these should be available nowadays.

Enthusiasm for cask

Sampled at the brewery tap, the 2B is a remarkably tasty beer for 3.2% abv, tingling with crisp biscuity maltiness and fresh citrus hoppiness. Other cask beers include the best-

selling 3B (4%), the flowery Summer Ale (4%) and a smooth and silky bittersweet strong

bitter, Kingsdown (5%).

The tower-style brewery itself is a reassuring mix of traditional brewing vessels and a modern bottling plant, where Arkell's bottles its beers, including the award-winning Bee's Organic Ale, plus those of other breweries such as Loddon, Skinner's and West Berkshire. "We bottle like mad," says Arkell, "and we also added a nitro-kegging plant when that was fashionable."

The nitro-kegged Arkell's Smooth accounts for just under 10% of production and is sold mainly in town pubs and clubs where turn-over is slow. However, there's no doubting their support and enthusiasm for cask beer as their annual beer festival showed on 8 September. More than 1,000 people descended on the brewery to drink their beers alongside those from fellow members of the Independent Family Brewers of Britain (IFBB).

"I am really optimistic about the future," says Arkell. "We have great pubs and beer that people like. We are going to continue brewing beer and we are not going down the pile 'em high, sell 'em cheap route. I love this company."

Arkell's facts

l The brewery once employed a philosopher to go round their pubs

l During the July floods 14 Arkell's pubs were closed on the Friday and all but three were open the next day

l Over 50% of their employees have spent 20 years or more with Arkell's

l The brewery's beer Moonlight was named after Peter Arkell's wartime exploits