Molson-Coors to close Irwindale brewery

Wow! It sure does appear that Molson Coors (MillerCoors in the recent past) is not selling well. A few years ago they closed the brewery in Eden, NC and now they are closing this brewery.

I wonder if Pabst will take the step to purchase this brewery and actually production brew their own brands?

Cheers!

 

It will indeed be interesting to see how this plays out.

According to a Brewbound article:

“During the trial, Pabst CEO Eugene Kashper testified that he attempted to buy the Eden facility for $100 million after MillerCoors announced the closure…”

So, apparently there was an interest by Eugene Kashper in the past to purchase a MillerCoors brewery.

The asking price for the Irwindale brewery is $150 M. Perhaps it is a more capable (bigger) brewing facility?

Time will tell here.

Cheers!

 

After announcing the deal to move their contract from MillerCoors to City breweries last Fall, Kashper said "Pabst wants to remain a virtual brewer" (their cute "high tech" term for being a contract-brewer/beer marketing company).

Note that same BMI article says:

Irwindale replaced an older Miller facility in next door Azusa, California, which they bought from Lucky Lager/General Brewing Co. in 1966, so they've been in California for awhile. Azusa was the first brewery Miller ever owned outside Milwaukee.

 

The beer landscape is always in flux, but Irwindale and Eden closing is another full chapter. I feel for the employees and know that the Eden closing was a terrible blow to Rockingham County for many reasons.
The amazing amount of alcopop these days, plus spirits and wine, seem to be ganging up on and changing the old traditional brands. Plymouth and Oldsmobile drove down the same road.

 

MillerCoors' barrelage for 2018 was 50M bbl. (plus Pabst's 4.5M), and it's safe to assume they'll be down a few percentage points when '19's figures are announced, so even with Irwindale closed and Pabst eventually gone, they'll still be over-capacity - but reasonably so.

Albany GA – 10
Ft. Worth – 9
Golden – 13
Irwindale – 7
Milwaukee – 10
Shen. VA – 7
Trenton, OH – 11___
Total 60 Million Barrels capacity

 

Fyi, re Pabst , this just showed up (2 hrs ago) on the local bottle shop's social media :

 

Yeah, that was announced last spring Pabst Blue Ribbon Hard Coffee and showed up on the shelves by me soon after. As far as I can tell, the same four-packs are still on the shelves.

That stuff's not a MillerCoors-brewed product, tho', brewed, well, created by some tiny outfit out of Wisconsin - Horseshoe Beverage Company, LLC,Neenah, WI

EDIT

Goddam, look at this. https://www.beeradvocate.com/community/threads/rant-winter-beer-gone-from-shelves.631107/

 

I had a sample at our Old Chicago. It's okay but I certainly can live without it.

 

They just entered into an agreement with City brewery ain't know way they will back out of that after that extremely high Eden, NC offer.

 

The Brewbound story on the deal quotes Kashpar as saying:

Ha. I was thinking, "Gee, why not have City buy it and just have Pabst commit to a certain percentage of the barrelage..." but then I remembered that's kinda how City wound up with Latrobe - with Boston Beer Co. helping them out with contracts (and maybe money for renovations/upgrades), only for BBC to buy the old Schaefer (Stroh/Pabst/Diageo) brewery in PA a little while later.

Which "extremely high" offer -
Pabst's $100M or MC's $750M counteroffer.

 

Well the story is here: https://www.brewbound.com/news/last...uires-2-5-million-cases-from-mission-beverage

 

"MillerCoors Sells Eden Facility for $2.75 Million"

The unintended consequences of business negotiations? According to trial testimony Pabst offered to purchase this facility of $100 M but Pabst counter-offered with $750 M but ended up with less than $3 M. Hopefully all parties can operate in a more sensible manner with the Irwindale Brewery but who really knows what will happen here?

Cheers!

 

Yeah, that sale to the salvage company, D. H. Griffin, was much discussed at the time. As noted in a follow-up story in the same NC paper, Rockingham Now, the local Eden Business Development Director is quoted:

“(MillerCoors) is a multi-national corporation.They have a lot smarter people than me making decisions, but it seems like if you just look at the facts, if they were offered $100 million and declined that – and there has been a lot of equipment that is no longer at that facility, that's for sure – and to sell it for under $3 million … you could certainly speculate that they didn't want another brewery in there. But you’d have to ask them.”

This seems to have been confirmed in a (for-pay-only) article in a Jan. 4th Beer Business Daily titled A PISSED OFF PABST :

Seems like MillerCoors stripped the place of a lot of the brewing and other manufacturing equipment, so the local company didn't really buy a "brewery" as much as a large, empty plant.

When Miller closed the old Olympia brewery in Tumwater, WA (which they had only bought from Pabst a few years early) and put it up for sale, they added a deed restriction which prevented anyone from producing alcohol on the site after Miller closed the brewery in June 2003. (MillerCoors dropped that clause about a decade later). Excess capacity was a big problem for the macro industry in the 1980-2000s and with their market share shrinking, it remains so (ex. Eden and now Irwindale).

I think the effort that MillerCoors has put into their Hamms brand certainly suggests they're interested in Pabst (shrinking) share of the economy beer segment. I guess at some point the money they make on selling the finished product direct to Pabst (at prices set by contract years previous) isn't as great as they might make if it was their own brand(s) sold through their superior wholesale network and via their own marketing departments.

 

Molson Coors to cease production at California brewery; grants Pabst exclusive window to purchase

says the MillerCoors Blog, "Behind the Beer".

 

I vote with my limited wallet, and is PBR $0.13 per 12oz can better than Hamm’s? My fridge says no.

 

Looks like Pabst did buy the MC Irwindale brewery, for $150 million:
Molson Coors Completes Sale of Irwindale Brewery
...but their plans are kinda vague. Pabst formed a new subsidiary, Irwindale Brew Yard, to operate it and whose president, Adam Sher (an LA lawyer, who is also Pabst's general counsel), said:

As noted in other posts above, Irwindale's capacity is usually given as 7M bbl/yr and Pabst's barrelage last year was 4.5M bbl.

In 2000, the first full year after buying most of the Heileman/Stroh portfolio Pabst sold 10.5M bbl. At the time, while they were still operating two breweries (Pearl-San Antonio and the former Stroh plant outside Allentown, PA), much of their production was coming out of Miller breweries.