Fourpure Brewing Co has been acquired by Australian corporation Lion, which has a number of food and drink divisions, including brewing. Lion is, in turn, part of global giant Kirin.
Unlike the recent Beavertown deal, which saw Heineken acquire a minority share in the business, Lion has purchased 100% of Fourpure.
The existing team will stay in place, but on their blog today, founders Dan and Tom Lowe said it would not be a case of “business as usual” because “otherwise, why would we bother?”.
Dan says: “We’ve now reached a point where, if we want to reach more people and get them drinking good beer, then we need more resources, equipment, and amazing people.”
Easy decision
He adds: “This really was an easy decision in the end. Not only are the people at Lion terribly nice and incredibly positive, they share our vision and believe in us to carry it out. Not to mention a fantastic track record with the likes of Little Creatures.
“Lion are four people in the UK — they do not have a string of pubs to roll our beer out into, we will still have to win over every new line through the quality of our product. They, like us, choose to do something because it is hard, not because it is easy.
“They see Fourpure and our beer as a primary focus here in the UK and as their sole production brewing facility we will benefit from all the time, expertise and investment required to succeed, and that means that everything around the brewery will be a little bit easier and a little bit better.”
He concludes: “We’ve been investing in our business for five years to create what was London’s largest modern independent craft brewer and if 2018 is anything to go by, we believe we’ve already shown that with growth our beers are only getting better.”
