Moorhouse's turnover rises 18%

The company is targeting sales of £7m by 2015 and is looking to expand into new markets for its beers, particularly in London. Speaking to the Publican's Morning Advertiser​'s sister title M&C Report​, managing director David Grant declined to reveal profits but said they were “as expected”.

The company owns six pubs. Regarding future acquisitions, Grant said: “If something comes along at the right price we will be interested.”

He did not expect to make disposals at the company but said: “It might just be that we might have to mothball them for a period of time, but that would be a last resort.

“We have some challenging times ahead both ourselves and managers and tenants because that side of the business is very much struggling.”

Negotiation​

Grant said Moorhouse’s is in negotiation on supply contracts with pub companies and wholesalers. “We are now looking at spreading the weight of our products through the UK and London particularly.”

He reiterated concerns expressed last week that some smaller brewers are using the savings from Progressive Beer Duty to undercut those that are too big to gain the full benefits of the tax cut.

Moorhouse’s is targeting sales of £7m by 2015 but Grant said: “When we put the original budget together six or seven years ago we didn’t have 1,600 micro breweries around selling beer for next to nothing.”

In May 2011 Moorhouse’s opened a £4.2m brewery that trebled production capacity to more than 1,000 barrels a week.