North West Focus: Upbeat Moorhouse's bucks the depressing trend
Last month, as I waded through the depressing pile of New Year press releases and statements all warning of ill-fortune for brewing, an email caught my eye. Like the thought of Professor Ian Gilmore of the Alcohol Health Alliance sitting in your pub nursing a pint, it seemed completely out of place.
"Bumper Christmas," it said. Lies, I thought. Or perhaps the company had been drinking too much of its own product.
But it turned out this brewer really had enjoyed a bumper Christmas - and that may even have been an understatement.
The company in question was Burnley-based Moorhouse's where sales records for the festive period were smashed as trading saw a 10 per cent year-on-year increase on the 2006 figures - themselves an all-time high. TV advertising campaignThe success followed the launch of a 30-second TV advertising campaign that was shown in the Granada and Yorkshire regions.
"Once again our sales fly in the face of the pundits that forever peddle doom and gloom for the ale market," said managing director David Grant at the time. "The TV exposure has further raised our profile for the future and, as a result, we have already gained several new accounts for 2008."
Speaking to The Publican a month later, Grant was still one happy chappie, particularly with the success of the ads on TV - not exactly a regular home for cask ale brewers.
"I really took a gamble on that," he says. "It started when we began to upscale our brewery visits. We wanted to produce a corporate DVD and that started the idea in my mind.
"I've never seen a cask ale brewer of our size advertising on TV and certainly not seen a brewer in the North West advertise that way.
"What we wanted was to stimulate awareness of us as a business. The impact was huge, even in the off-trade."
There is no doubt Grant is looking to ramp up the position of Moorhouse's in the marketplace. He has just announced he will be stepping down from his role as northern chairman of the Society of Independent Brewers (SIBA) to spend more time on the brewery. The big concern is how to tackle growing demand.
"We currently brew 280 barrels and our capacity is 320 barrels," he says. "How do you increase volumes but keep an eye on quality? That is the crucial question." Interestingly, Grant is passionate about the issue against the company giving into the temptation of increasing volume for the sake of it. "To be honest I would be happy to restrict our volumes rather than restrict our quality," he says.
