Newcee Brown rant

[Giraffidae 0]

or do they think it’s from Newquay, Cornwall?

 

bloody London based news readers/reporters keep saying Newcee Brown, one of my pet hates about London.

 

 

 

shame it’s not brewed up here now though.

[Howmanheyman 27716]

or do they think it’s from Newquay, Cornwall?

 

bloody London based news readers/reporters keep saying Newcee Brown, one of my pet hates about London.

 

 

 

shame it’s not brewed up here now though.

It's a fucking disgrace, actually.

 

(Expect the local press to swallow the PR guff, though).

[Marko 0]

unfortunately not the only brewery to be moved away from its spiritual home. However has an ale with a place name ever been moved before? most probably like!

[Howmanheyman 27716]

unfortunately not the only brewery to be moved away from its spiritual home. However has an ale with a place name ever been moved before? most probably like!

Well I know it happened four years ago for a start!

 

Any others?

[Renton 18143]

unfortunately not the only brewery to be moved away from its spiritual home. However has an ale with a place name ever been moved before? most probably like!

Well I know it happened four years ago for a start!

 

Any others?

 

Announced yesterday it's moving to Yorkshire? Loss of around 100 jobs.

[Guest alex]

Tadcaster Brown.

[Monkeys Fist 39211]

The Day the Broon Died

[Giraffidae 0]

unfortunately not the only brewery to be moved away from its spiritual home. However has an ale with a place name ever been moved before? most probably like!

Well I know it happened four years ago for a start!

 

Any others?

 

yeh, I was told about 4 years ago that the Dunston move was a sham to get around the EU regulators. Can’t believe the media are buying into the S&N PR lies about it being due to the recession.

 

Well over half the production of Newcastle Brown Ale these days crosses the Atlantic, in the US it’s the second biggest imported bottled beer.

 

Have you seen the size of the Dunston brewery (which when they took over they then sold off most of the premises) compared to the old Gallowgate brewery? S&N jettisoned Newcastle years ago.

 

improving profit margins = corporate greed, nothing else.

[Ayatollah Hermione 12908]

oh no, what will our stereotypical descriptions drink now?

[ChezGiven 0]

Newcastle Brown blatantly qualifies for a PGI so someone could challenge S&N's removal of it.

Edited October 14, 2009 by ChezGiven

[Renton 18143]

Newcastle Brown blatantly qualifies for a PGI so someone could challenge S&N's removal of it.

 

Didn't the company voluntarily drop it for this very reason?

[Giraffidae 0]

Newcastle Brown blatantly qualifies for a PGI so someone could challenge S&N's removal of it.

 

Didn't the company voluntarily drop it for this very reason?

 

yep, but only after they have copyrighted Newcastle Brown Ale trademark internationally. They new this was going to take a few years, hence production at Dunston to keep the PGI status in the meantime.

[ChezGiven 0]

Newcastle Brown blatantly qualifies for a PGI so someone could challenge S&N's removal of it.

 

Didn't the company voluntarily drop it for this very reason?

 

It was dropped since under PGI, production had to stay in Newcastle and couldnt move to the Fed at Gateshead, different city. No one complained because it was still really in Newcastle. 3 years later or whatever and 'domestic beer consumption' is being blamed.

 

I dont get this at all, under a PGI, the world's supply of Brown Ale has to be made in the NE? Right? Then how does the 30% reduction in the value of sterling and the defintite medium term sterling target of the BoE mean that UK produced beer is under pressure now? Unless the brewery in the NE only serves the UK, as i presume the US beer is produced over there. The devaluation in sterling to encourage 'export-led' recovery should help a domestic beer that is exported, so why the need to consolidate at Tadcaster? Because falling beer sales are hitting short-term profits and managers need to hit their targets.

[Howmanheyman 27716]

Here's a post I did earlier on this subject on another forum;

 

We tried to tell people this in 2005 when they closed the Tyne Brewery, but they didn't listen, particularly the local press, they completely swallowed the S&N PR guff. They closed Fountain in Edinburgh and bought out a very small brewery in the same city and 'kept brewery jobs in Scotland' but made a mint on the prime location of the Fountain site and saved money on peoples wages by making employees redundant. They've done the same here and stand to make a very, very healthy profit from the prime land at Gallowgate. They bought the 'Fed' for £8M and transferred some jobs there, (but overall, made people redundant), thus 'Keeping brewery jobs on Tyneside' but it was always going to be a stop-gap. Not two years after transferring and saving my job I and the rest of the bottling dept and kegging dept were made redundant, two years after this the Brewing is closing after a 'review'. The local press were hoodwinked then by the PR guff and chose to go with S&N instead of North-East Union members who were telling them a different tale and who have been proved to be correct. Forget about the 'only running at 60% capacity bullshit as well, they had a lot of excuses then as well which we saw through. The motto is, you can't fool all the people all the time.......but you sure as fuck can fool the Chronicle!* (they were even promoting S&N through competitions after they took jobs away from Tyneside to Yorkshire when we went!)

 

Ozy, by the way, was referring to the PGI which is a European Protected Geographical Indication emblem. The company must be the only company in Europe who has it and doesn't particularly want it, (the companies lawyers have already looked at it.)

 

People might think I'm being a bit OTT or indeed a little bitter. I'm not really that bitter at the company as I had ten great years there and was well looked after, I just wish they'd been a bit more straight with everyone, however, the top and bottom of it for me is that a long, long part of Newcastle's culture and history has been sold to keep the 'market' happy and so a few directors can give themselves a pat on the back and a nice little rise and I think that is a crying shame.

 

*Ten years of NUFC beeing used as a cash cow by the Shepherds and Halls and it not being a huge secret on Tyneside, yet not a peep out of the Chronicle or Journal. Some journalism there, mind.

 

What I would add to this is this,

 

In the late nineties, S&N asked the council to demolish some houses around Bath Lane as they wanted to build a new bottling hall in the area and create some jobs. The council complied and knocked them down only for the company to have second thoughts. The council quite rightly told them they'd better go ahead with it as they'd already knocked down the houses in what was Buckingham Street. In 1999 Sir Bobby Robson officially opened the new bottling hall which cost S&N £16M. The botting hall ran very well after a shaky start and was packaging the vast majority of the export NBA to the USA. The American NBA was the real moneyspinner for the company and they made far more from this than they did from the home trade, (returnable bottles). In about 2004 they spent another £16M and built another new bottling hall in Tadcaster and transferred the US stuff to them and left us in the shit. Then about a year later they closed the Tyne Brewery. They moved to Dunston as Dunston had a bottle washer in place and Tadcaster couldn't take on the home trade as they didn't have a bottle washer. After two years S&N announced they weren't going to be using returnable bottles anymore and all home trade would be 'new glass' only, (a move which we asked for on many occasions whilst at the Tyne Brewery but it never suited them at the time). So that was Dunston's reason for being gone. They then swiftly had a review and closed the Bottling and Kegging. They have been trying to get out of Newcastle for years and make some money on the land. The Chronicle and local media were just interested in their 'last orders' headlines and didn't want, or weren't bright enough to dig into the real reasons S&N sold out a part of Newcastle heretage.