Crowdcube Shares Food & Beverage Industry Predictions Following Camden Town Brewery Acquisition

Last month, Crowdcube alum Camden Town Brewery announced it has been acquired by mega brewer AB InBev. This made the small business the equity crowdfunding platform’s second exit.

CrowdcubeNow, Crowdcube is ready to share details about the future of the food and beverage industry:

“As you may have seen Camden Town Brewery has announced that it has been acquired by AB InBev, the world’s largest brewer and one of the biggest companies worldwide. This acquisition comes just eight months after Camden’s successful raise of £2.75m on Crowdcube and provides its 2,173 investors with a healthy return on their investment. Camden meanwhile can go on to expand and innovate on a larger scale than ever before.”

The platform noted that AB InBev’s move to acquire Camden Town Brewery wasn’t unusual:

camden-town-brewery-beer-glasses“The beverages sector has a long history of mergers and acquisitions (M&A) and whilst historically many transactions have been large in scale, there has been a noticeable increase in recent years of the large global players purchasing craft breweries. Indeed, the acquisition of Camden was one of three craft brewery acquisitions announced by AB InBev in December 2015 (the other two being US brewers).”

Crowdcube went on to share the notable craft brewer acquisitions in 2015:

  • Heineken acquired a 50% stake in Lagunitas Brewing Co., the California-based craft brewer
  • SABMiller acquired London-based Meantime Brewing Company
  • MillerCoors acquired Saint Archer Brewing Co., the San Diego-based craft brewer
  • AB InBev acquired LA-based Golden Road Brewing, Arizona-based Four Peaks Brewing and Colorado-based Breckenridge Brewery
  • Asahi acquired Melbourne-based Mountain Goat

The crowdfunding site added:

Camden Town Beer 2015“In mature beer markets such as the US, the UK and Australia, the large incumbents have been consistently losing share to craft brewers. Whilst the mainstream portfolios of the global players have seen volume declines in these markets, the craft category has seen rapid growth and is becoming a meaningful part of the beer category – craft beer now represents 11% of the total beer market in the US. By acquiring craft breweries, larger players are aiming to tap into the growth of the craft segment. The global brewers can also significantly increase the distribution of the craft brands they purchase.

 

“This approach to M&A, pushing acquired brands through existing distribution networks, has been widely used across the wider consumer products space. This includes categories such as food, spirits and HPC (home and personal care) and is expected to continue as larger companies seek to fill category gaps or add category scale in response to changing consumer demands. Indeed, a recent survey of senior executives in the food and beverage sector conducted by Ernst & Young showed that 67% of companies in the sector expect to pursue deals in 2016.

 

Crowdcube Funded Companies“Our #FundedClub is made up from 345 successful raises, with 100 of those businesses trading within the food and beverage sector. Our savvy crowd of investors have made more than 23,000 successful investments into this sector on Crowdcube, which equates to over £43 million of funding to date. Everyday, Sophisticated and High Net Worth investors have backed the likes of Flavourly, DeskBeers, UBrew, Bellfield Brewery and BrewDog just to name a few. BrewDog was our first dual raise and funded over £3m. With so many companies in the food and beverage sector expecting to pursue deals this year, we look forward to following the savvy crowd and hopefully see more success stories within this industry.”


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