Kmflett's Blog

Greene King sells Speckled Hen to Damm & gets out of supermarket sales

Greene King has sold the Old Speckled Hen brands it acquired 25 years ago to Spanish owned brewer Damm. They will brew it at their Bedford brewery which was originally owned by Charles Wells and then Carlsberg.

At the same time they have announced a withdrawal from off sales-supermarkets etc- with a focus on selling cask and ‘craft’ beer in their own pub estate. They are in the process of opening a new brewery which it seems likely will lead to the closure of their historic site in the centre of Bury St Edmunds.

Trying to make sense of this latest Big Beer story requires more than a check on AI.

Despite what the Guardian thinks it is not about a British brewer being bought by a foreign one. Greene King has been owned by Hong Kong based CK Assets since 2019.

Damm is family owned but since it is operating in Spain and the UK clearly  also in the Big Beer market.

Quite why GK wants out of supermarket sales is not reported. It is noted that Old Speckled Hen variants account for more than half of GK’s off sales and perhaps is the bigger brand in supermarkets.

That said assuming that there is profit in it even given the sharp price competition on the shelves it still begs the question of why GK are doing it. Perhaps the new brewery will not have the capacity or building new bottling and canning lines etc is too costly.

One thing that is not mentioned, as often, is jobs. One would expect job losses at GK and there is no news on whether Damm plans to create any jobs. Just another day in the world of Big Beer.