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"The Irish Times":2nn3gy85 wrote: the Vintners' Federation of Ireland has expressed concern about a potential reduction in competition in the beer market[/quote:2nn3gy85]

Brilliant! Who says the publicans lobby can't do irony?

Are these type of mergers and aquisitions by the megabrewers fairly typical now in Europe? Coors /Molson Canada is doing the same type of things here. Merging, eliminating products and so on. Not that is matters really to craft brewers but is seems as if fewer choices by the consumer is not a good thing.

Yeah, Eastern Europe in particular is one of the few parts of the world where the market for beer is growing. The cherry on the top of the Scottish & Newcastle cake was Baltica Beverage Holdings, their Russian operation which exports all over Europe and has a big presence in Scandinavia. You'll see plenty of Baltica beers in Ireland too. Carlsberg were desperate to get hold of it and were prepared to do a deal with their arch-rival Heineken to get it.

Further consolidation is definitely not a good thing, but with just three big Irish brewers now probably going down to two, there's not a whole lot else the big operators can do in this country

We might see it go the other way: Diageo might decide to give up on beer altogether, since they're mostly a spirits company.

Speaking of the devil, guess who's recruiting[/url:3dd0d0fc]?

The strapline in the paper is "Love Beer, Work Here", yet they don't seem to be offering positions as production saboteurs...

....work for Coors....the American motto could read something like "killing thousands of wild trout in Clear Creek since 2004"

The Irish-made Coors Light is marketed with "Amazing things happen high in the Rockies". So the sub-title should be "(but don't tell the EPA)"?