For one of the first craft beer acquisitions of 2016,
Victory Brewing Company has announced they will be moving under the corporate umbrella of Artisanal Brewing Ventures, which also houses Southern Tier Brewing Company.“The new strategic framework between ABV, Victory and Southern Tier provides capital, security and vision for the future,” as mentioned in the press release. “ABV, formed to unify independent craft brewers and distillers, embraces the collaborative craft spirit while administering crucial growth resources.”
With Anheuser-Busch InBev continually buying up craft breweries in the United States, it has become even more imperative for craft brewers to band together. Growth and expansion are huge parts of a company’s business model, something that breweries struggle with on their own a lot. That’s why we have seen so many big name breweries flock to macrobreweries in the past couple years.
ABV was formed back in 2014 by Phin and Sara DeMink of Southern Tier and Ulysses Management LLC. Their goal was to create a firm that could offer resources to craft breweries for growth opportunities, while still allowing the breweries to act independently. Ron Barchet and Bill Covaleski, founders of Victory, will become significant shareholders in ABV and join the ABV Board of Directors.
|
|
This alliance between Southern Tier and Victory will have a commanding joint capacity of over 800,000 barrels of potential annual production. It creates one of the largest brewers in the Northeast and ranks within the top 15 craft brewing companies in the United States according to Brewers Association criteria with combined 2015 shipments of over 250,000 barrels.
If craft breweries want to continue to outgrow their humble begins, they will need to continue to band together to create the resources one cannot obtain single-handedly as easily. And if they want to keep the macrobreweries from regaining their beloved market share, then they will need to keep building similar alliances instead of “selling out”.
