Asahi Consolidates Operations at Griffin Brewery

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Switching production of other brands to Chiswick location

The Griffin Brewery

March 7, 2024

Asahi Group Holdings, the owner of the Griffin Brewery in Chiswick, has announced that it is to switch production of two of its brands to the riverside facility.

It is closing the Meantime brewery in Greenwich which previously took over the production of the Sussex based Dark Star microbrewery. Both the Meantime and Dark Star ranges will now be brewed, packaged and distributed in Chiswick.

Asahi acquired Meantime in 2016 and announced it was transferring the production of Dark Star to Greenwich in November 2022 .

The Meantime Brewing Company was founded by Alastair Hook in 1999 in a lock up near Charlton Athletic’s ground before moving to Greenwich and was purchased by SABMiller in May 2015 who subsequently sold it to Asahi less than a year later for regulatory reasons.

Meantime brews a range of around a dozen beers focused on traditional British and European styles such as Lager, Pale Ale, Porter and India Pale Ale as well as limited offerings of seasonal ales.

The Campaign of Real Ale’s (CAMRA) Gillian Hough was quoted as saying, “It’s a further blow for British brewing to hear that Asahi will now move production of both Dark Star and Meantime to a single site in Chiswick.

“Multinationals constantly seek out the authenticity of smaller brands, whose integrity is tied to their founding, their place of production and the love and care that comes from a team of skilled brewers.

“Buying up and consolidating these brands in the name of profit not only strips communities of their brewing heritage and creates redundancies for the brewers themselves, it often fundamentally destroys what made that beer special in the first place and reduces consumer choice to a meaningless selection between products owned by a single brand.”

Asahi declined to comment on how many jobs would be lost but said that Meantime would continue to operate a ‘consumer retail experience’ from Greenwich along with some brewing activities.

Its spokesperson said, “The addition of Meantime and Dark Star to the site will be mutually beneficial to both the Chiswick site and all the brands produced there.”

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