More than 100 breweries have become insolvent in the space of just two years, according to figures obtained by UK accountancy group UHY Hacker Young.
Some 43 breweries became insolvent in the year to 28 February 2025, a freedom of information request by UHY Hacker Young revealed. The number is an 29.5% decrease on the year prior, where 61 breweries became insolvent, but higher than any other year since 2021.
Among the 43 breweries to either fall into administration, enter a company voluntary arrangement or be liquidated in the past year were Fourpure, Magic Rock Brewery, Hackney Brewery, By The Horns and Wild Weather Ales.
Independent craft beer producers were facing mounting cost pressures and the market could not continue to support all the brands in it, said Brian Johnson, partner at UHY Hacker Young.
“The craft beer boom was one of the most exciting recent trends in food and drink,” he said. “Unfortunately, it is a sector that attracted too many entrepreneurs who struggled to break even.”
“Recent closures suggest the UK’s craft beer market cannot continue to support all the independent producers that have sprung up in the last 15 years. Weak consumer spending means many breweries will have to adapt to leaner times.”
Many small brewers were caught in a “perfect storm” of production costs soaring while household spending remained tight, Johnson noted.
“Recent increases in the national minimum wage and employer National Insurance contributions have pushed up the wage bill for brewers,” he said. “Margins have been further squeezed by inflation across ingredients, brewing equipment and energy bills.”
Meanwhile, brewers faced ongoing challenges in scaling up or finding routes to market to sell their wares.
“Only the bigger craft breweries can access supermarket shelves or national pub chains meaning that many cannot achieve the economies of scale needed to break even,” Johnson added.
In April, Luke Wilson, an insolvency practitioner who worked on the pre-pack sales of Magic Rock and Fourpure to Keystone Brewing Group, said craft breweries were no longer attractive acquisition targets.
Wilson said his firm FRP Advisory hadn’t seen “an abundance of people knocking down the door” to acquire brewing businesses it had been tasked with bringing to market.
The “pretty big risk profile” of many of the breweries being offered for sale, as well as challenging market conditions in craft beer, meant there would be times when there were no buyers and the businesses could not be salvaged, he warned.
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