UK brewery attracts Irish bidders

Interbrew UK is in talks with two Irish- based bidders who are interested in buying its facility in Belfast, which will be closed with the loss of more than 80 jobs if it cannot be sold.

Multinational Interbrew announced yesterday that it was seeking a buyer for the Bass Ireland Ulster Brewery, which produces Bass, Tennants, Stella Artois and Becks beers.

The Irish Times learned yesterday that two potential buyers are in talks with Interbrew. It is understood that both are based in Ireland.

The company wants to complete the sale by the end of September.

The decision to sell the plant follows the loss of a bottling contract for Lucozade, which it had been packaging for export to the Far East. GlaxoSmithKline, which owns Lucozade, has decided to centralise bottling for those markets closer to the region itself.

Interbrew will stop bottling the soft drink at the end of the year, and the company has said that the loss of this volume - around 40 million bottles - threatens the Belfast plant's viability.

Mr David Randall, Interbrew UK's supply chain director, said that, following a "three-month intensive search throughout the UK and Ireland", it was not able to find a replacement contract. He said the company believed a sale to an independent operator offered the brewery its best chance of survival.

"However, if we fail in our efforts then we will have no other option than to close our manufacturing facilities at the Ulster Brewery by early 2005," Mr Randall said. The brewery employs 85 directly and there are four other service jobs dependent on the plant.

Closure would mean the loss of most of the jobs at the plant, which is Northern Ireland's only major brewery. The company estimates that it could save up to 15 jobs if the workers were willing to be redeployed.

Interbrew has guaranteed that a successful purchaser will be given a long-term contract to brew and package a range of its brands for the Irish market. However, its statement yesterday stressed that a sale would be conditional on the new owner continuing to manufacture at the Belfast site.

It also said that the new owner would have to find a replacement contract for its bottling operation, which is key to the plant's viability.

The company employs a total of 285 people in Ireland, 75 of them in the Republic. It also has a distribution centre in Omagh, Co Tyrone, which is not threatened by developments at Belfast.

Mr Randall said yesterday that sales of the company's brands were strong and set to meet their targets this year. It also has an investment programme to drive market share and volume on the island as a whole.