Imagine one of the breweries in the U.S. announcing a $20 million expansion and then laying off a chunk of its workforce two months later. Well, that is exactly what just happened up in Canada.
Company president Andrew Oland says the cuts are due to changes in a contract relationship between Moosehead and a large international brewer, which will result in either the loss of, or significant reduction in the brewing and packaging of that company’s brands at the Saint John brewery.
Modern Brewery Age publisher, Peter Reid, identified the company as being “caught in between conglomerate and microbrew.”
I imagine the “unnamed” large international company is Diageo, which had Moosehead brew some US-bound Guinness Extra Stout (I see it mostly in the 22 oz. bottles, the 12’s are from Labatt) and canned Red Stripe. It was recently announced that Red Stripe production was moving to City in Latrobe for the US market- I wonder if all US-GES moves to Labatt?
The NBBJ article, tho’, mentions Heineken and Sapporo moving production “south of the border”. Sapporo in the US is still coming from their subsidiary brewery in Canada – Sleeman’s AFAIK. What Heineken brands moved out of Canada to US production?