| Beer, Cask ale, The Business End

Jennings Brewery Saved

Finally, some good news from the Carlsberg Marston’s Brewing Co Tour of Destruction.

The historic Jennings Brewery located in Cockermouth, Cumbria, has been acquired by two local business owners and entrepreneurs. 

The deal looks pretty clean-cut: the new owners get the physical brewery, as well as all rights, trademarks and intellectual property belonging to the Jennings brand. The entity now known as Carlsberg Britvic will sell bottled Jennings beers until March, after which all production will transfer to the new company – Jennings Brewery Ltd. 

At a time when some brewery acquisitions have a sinister fire-sale feel to them, this one feels positive: while the new owners are (mostly) new to the beer world, they’re local to Cockermouth. Wine and the Wood, founded by local entrepreneur Rebecca Canfield, is an online retailer specialising in wine that already sells local Lake District beers. Interestingly, this business is to be fully incorporated into Jennings, not the other way around. Delkia is a “specialist engineering & technology company for safety-related & mission-critical systems serving Defence and Nuclear sectors.”  While that may seem like a less obvious fit, they seem genuinely interested in the brewery site itself. They let slip that Carlsberg Marstons – sorry, Carlsberg Britvic – had allowed it to fall into a bad state of disrepair, but CEO Kurt Canfield, says they are taking it on “To benefit the entire community. The Maltings building is an historic landmark, and we have extensive plans to enhance the site while respecting its heritage,” after “critical repairs” have been made.

The necessary beer knowledge comes from Chris France, who the two companies have appointed as the new Managing Director of Jennings Brewery Ltd. I first met Chris when he was setting up online beer retailer Beer Hawk. Since selling that, he’s been working in the beer business helping new breweries start up.

In 2024, when I wrote about Carlsberg Marston’s – Britain’s biggest cask ale brewer – and their wholesale abandonment of cask ale, I said the best we could hope for is that if they weren’t interested in cask any more, at least they might let smaller brewers move in to a market they no longer care about. If your main product is one of the world’s top lager brands, and your company isn’t British, you’re never going to prioritise traditional British cask ale. Other multinationals, such as AB-Inbev and Molson Coors, have form in saying “Well, we don’t want it any more, but we’re not going to let anyone else have it.” This looks like a clean break with no funny business such as holding onto trade marks and forcing the new owners to brew under licence.

I’m sure there will be questions to be asked. But in a sector of the beer market where good news is scarce, Jennings is now under small, independent, local, British-based ownership once again. If you see the beers around, please show your appreciation.

Also, check out more green shoots in the post-corporate cask ale wasteland in today’s Pellicle, where I share more wonderful news about what’s happening in Burton-on-Trent.

2 Comments

2 Comments

Jeff Pickthall

I interviewed the head brewer in C2010. He told me his hands were tied wrt to beer styles. He could see that Jennings being wedded to a portfolio of tame beers in very traditional styles was doing no favours for the company. It will be interesting to see if this changes.

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Andrew Bowden

Good luck to them. There’s a lot of pubs still covered in Jennings branding in the north of the Lake District, and it feels like there’s a lot of potential markets for them.

I always enjoyed Jennings beers, but it’s been quite clear on my recent visits to the Lakes that they had almost disappeared from the bar. Cumbrian Ales’s Loweswater Gold was basically the stable for bars wanting to offer a locally brewed ale, and by the presence of Wainwright in other pubs suggested that anyone supplied by Carlsberg had been encouraged to switch away from Jennings. Wainwright’s a reasonable ale, but it’s never been a beer of Cumbria despite its branding.

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