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Ireland.com is reporting[/url:1d2mft2c] the beginnings of a take-over bid that could leave Heineken owning Beamish & Crawford. Will further consolidation in Irish macrobrewing make a damn bit of difference?

I guess Heineken Ireland will have room for a "premium" stout and a cheap one in the portfolio, but I can't see Beamish and Murphy's Reds sitting side-by-side.

Could be the end of Beamish altogether. That is what consolidation means, right? Killing off the competition?

Yep. However, I think the stouts are aimed at different enough markets to justify their continued separate existence. Though, of course, with the decline in stout sales generally it would probably make business sense to kill one off.

Similarly, with one company making all of Ireland's Heineken, Amstel, Fosters, Miller, Kronenbourg and Coors it's probably time at least one went. And since the article suggests that Carlsberg will own Kronenbourg under the arrangement, no prizes for guessing which one gets the chop first. Big loss.

[quote:26w1c9hs]Could be the end of Beamish altogether. That is what consolidation means, right? Killing off the competition?
[/quote:26w1c9hs]Possibly, although going by sales Murphy's Stout would be the more likely to suffer. I can't imagine an enlarged group would have any loyalty to Murphys brewery over Beamish.

I was under the impression that Murphy's had larger sales. Am I wrong?

Murphys traditonally outsold Beamish, this has changed in the last 5 to 10 years. You will now struggle to see many Murphys taps outside of Cork, and certainly Munster. Beamish targetted the old man market by cutting their price, which had the knock on effect of their pint having decent throughput in old man's pubs. As a consequence the pint was generally in better nick where both were available. On a personal note I hope Beamish doesn't get the chop as it's my favourite of the Big 3.