There are few truly global players in the craft beer market, but Brewdog are fast becoming one of them.
Once as well known for madcap marketing stunts as they were for their beer, things have changed. Whisper it, but founders James Watt and Martin Dickie may be getting serious.
Since April 2017, when Brewdog sold off more than one-fifth of its equity to TSG Consumer Partners, the pair have been answerable to investors with more at stake than beer fans with a couple of shares bought for fun –many of whom it should be said made an enormous return when TSG came along.
With a private equity house in the kennel, talk quickly had to turn into action. And in the last 10 months Brewdog has officially opened its US brewery – the first outside its hometown. And now it has unveiled its plans for an Australian counterpart.
The Brisbane brewery will cost £17m. That’s roughly what Brewdog turned over in 2013. By 2015, it was £45m and in 2016, £72m. And that was with one brewery.
Building capacity at this pace will determine whether Brewdog can truly become a heavyweight, capable of taking on those brewing corporations it rails against.
Let’s not miss the obvious here, which is that Brewdog is one of the great Scottish business success stories of the last decade.
The company is scaling heights that even someone as ambitious as Mr Watt probably didn’t foresee back in 2007, and with a possible flotation on the horizon, it’s not just current investors who are keep a close eye on whether the business can do what it believes it can.
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