Beamish parent's sales rise 4.1%

Brewer Beamish & Crawford's British parent, Scottish & Newcastle, has reported profits of almost £400 million (€586 million) for last year, figures released yesterday show.

Scottish & Newcastle said it had grown sales in 2005 by 4.1 per cent to £3.9 billion from £3.7 billion the previous year. Profits before tax were up 9.5 per cent at £392 million.

Cork-based Beamish & Crawford said that it increased sales of its flagship brand, Beamish Stout, by 6 per cent in volume terms in 2005. This bucked a trend which saw Guinness lose 9 per cent of sales during the same year.

However, Beamish & Crawford refused to reveal the volume of the brand's sales or their value, although the company stated that it had increased overall sales by 8.6 per cent last year.

Scottish & Newcastle has decided to withdraw Beamish from the US where it had a small niche market, mainly on the east coast. The group's US distributor shipped about 120,000 cases, just over one million litres, to the US last year. However, it sold six million cases, 36 million litres, of its flagship brand, Newcastle Brown Ale, there in the same period.

Its US arm recently told the media there that Scottish & Newcastle's decision to take Beamish out of the US market was part of a global "focusing of initiative".

Beamish's strongest market was in Philadelphia, where a number of independently-owned pubs had started selling the stout as an alternative to Guinness, which they have been boycotting for six years because they believe it has shares in a recently-arrived Irish bar chain. However, Guinness has consistently denied this.

Beamish & Crawford's portfolio in Ireland also includes Beamish Red Irish Ale, Miller Genuine Draft, Fosters, Carling and Kronenbourg 1664.

It recently began selling a range of "world beers" to which it says consumers have responded well. The company's managing director, Alf Smiddy, said yesterday that it had enjoyed growth across all of its key brands, despite a 10 per cent decline in pub sales and an overall fall of 2 per cent in the Irish beer market.