ALE Summer 2004 No. 314 : Next section

Greene King in the News Again

Yet more news from our local brewing giant...

• Its Beer to dine for campaign to promote fine beer with fine food is into its second phase.
• It's following the trend amongst regional breweries to move its managed pubs to tenancies, with 26 transferring recently, leaving 520.
• It continues to make healthy profits from both pubs and beers, especially IPA, Abbot and Old Speckled Hen.
• It's estimated that 1 in 9 pints of draught real ale is made by Greene King.
• It's flagship IPA, often scorned, has followed-up its success last year (narrowly second in the Champion Beer of East Anglia 2003 competition) by winning the silver award in this year's Champion Beer of Britain blind-tasting competition at the Great British Beer Festival. The gold award went to Pale Rider from Kelham Island (Sheffield).

With such success, GK was able to buy all 432 of the Laurel pubco's community pubs for £654M, making a total of over 2,100 pubs. However competition rules require sell-offs if in any licensing area GK exceeds 25% of premises: it's selling 13 pubs to satisfy the Office of Fair Trading.

Another result of the deal is an acceleration in its conversions to tenancies, with another 103 managed houses about to go on the leasehold market, including The Grove (Arbury Road), the Jenny Wren (Campkin Road), the Old Spring (Ferry Path) and the Sir Isaac Newton (Castle Street) in Cambridge.

The deal leaves Laurel with around 150 town centre pubs, such as the Anchor, the Bath and the Hogshead in Cambridge.

• -> ALE 313 Spring 2004: Beer with Food
• -> Cambridge Evening News 28-Jul-2004: Jobs threat over pubs move
• -> BBC News 9-Jul-2004: Greene King expands pub empire
• -> The Publican 9-Jul-2004: Greene King agrees Laurel acquisition
• -> The Publican 25-Jun-2004: Greene King's 'Beer To Dine For' set for second course
• -> The Publican 10-May-2004: Greene King transfers 26 managed houses