New Belgium Not For Sale, Says CEO

While a host of leading craft brewers have gone on the block amid a recent acquisition frenzy by brewing giants like Anheuser-Busch InBev, SABMiller and Heineken, New Belgium Brewing says it’s not going that route.

The Fort Collins, Colorado-based New Belgium posted a message on its website blog late last week that read, “dozens of breweries for sale (but not us).” This followed on New Belgium CEO Christine Perich telling the USA Today Network earlier in the week that there are no plans for a sale.

Late last year, Reuters reported that New Belgium was seeking a buyer and that the price tag would likely top $1 billion. At the time, the brewer’s co-founder and board chair Kim Jordan said that no deal was pending, but that the company regularly held talks with the capital markets to discuss its options.

After years of impressive growth, New Belgium—the country’s fourth-largest craft brewer, according to the Brewers Association—lost ground in 2015. Perich told SND that the brewer’s sales volume last year was around 930,000 barrels, down from 945,000 the previous year. But Perich attributed some of that dropoff to capacity issues, and remained confident that New Belgium would soon surpass the 1-million-barrel threshold. —Peter Zwiebach

Tagged : Anheuser-Busch InBev, Heineken, New Belgium Brewing, SABMiller

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