LONDON: London-based Fuller, Smith & Turner is buying family-run brewing firm George Gale & Co. for 82.7 million pounds in cash. The 160-year-old Fuller will now add 111 pubs and a brewery from Gales to its tally of 242 pubs and a brewery.
The 4,421-pence-per-share offer is considered a 101 percent premium to the most recently traded Gales share price. Members of the Bowyer family, which had run the company since 1896, own more than half the shares of Gale.
Gale's top brand HSB, along with Festival Mild and Butser Bitter, will be added to Fuller's London Pride. Fuller's chief executive Michael Turner said his company has been scouting for acquisitions and had approached Gale some three months ago. Gale's brands and its brewery fit very well with Fuller's business.
A spokesperson for Fuller said the company will review and decide whether to keep Gale's brewery at Horndean, Hampshire, or move all production to Fuller's Griffin brewery in West London. The Horndean brewery's 50,000-barrel maximum capacity could be produced at the Griffin brewery.
A closure of the Horndean brewery will be opposed by the Campaign for Real Ale, which fears that some beers may vanish, such as Prize Old Ale, a 9 per cent alcohol, cork-bottled, real ale.
Gale's chairman Charles Brims said he had to sell the brewery mainly because of the impending smoking ban in pubs. The ban and increased competition made it difficult for small family brewers to expand, he said.
This is the largest acquisition for Fuller and the first brewery it has taken over in 150 years.
Posted
on : Wed, 09 Nov 2005 13:10 GMT | Business News
By : Mark Richardson
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