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Not all breweries took the same route to greatness. That’s one of the things I’m starting to realise. Tetley and Allied Breweries came into existence in quite a different way to Whitbread or Bass Charrington.

In the case of the latter two, they were the result of a large number of acquisitions and mergers. Bass Charrington started with Hammonds taking over multiple Northern breweries, then merging with Charrington which had also bought serval breweries and finally hooking up with Bass M & B. The story was similar at Whitbread, which made multiple purchases of brewers that were often the result of mergers themselves.

As you can see from the table, Tetley made a small number of large purchases. Before merging with first Walker Cain then with Ansells and Ind Coope to form Allied breweries. Because Allied was the result of the merger of a relatively small number of large breweries, they operated far fewer plants initially than other Big Six brewers: Leeds, Warrington, Birmingham, Burton-on-Trent, Alloa and Romford. That was it.

While Bass and Whitbread spent the 1960’s and 1970’s trying to rationalise their brewing operations, Allied didn’t need to close many breweries. And when they did close one, Ansells, it because of poor labour relations, not rationalisation.

Tetley acquisitions
Year Company Town tied houses
1897 Joshua Tetley Leeds 102
1954 Duncan Gilmour Sheffield 500
1959 William Whitaker Bradford
1960 Melbourne Leeds 345
1960 Walker Cain Warrington
Source:
The Brewing Industry: a Guide to Historical Records" edited by Leslie Richmond and Alison Turton, 1990, pages 231 and 326


When Tetley merged with Walker Cain, it owned 2,771 pubs.*




* “The Brewing Industry: a Guide to Historical Records" edited by Leslie Richmond and Alison Turton, 1990, page 326

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