The sale of one of Australia’s largest independent brewers and rise of home brand craft beer products suggest even a growing category can be tough for small players
One of Australia’s largest independent brewers, Fermentum, parent to Stone and Wood, Two Birds and Fixation, was acquired by multinational Lion last week. It pulls into focus the industry’s potholed pitch, where locally owned, small brewers go up against foreign-funded giants, while consumers are sometimes unable to tell the difference.
Fermentum is the latest in a growing list of independent breweries that have sold to one of the two major alcoholic beverage companies operating in Australia: Lion, a subsidiary of Mitsubishi through Kirin Holdings Company, and Carlton United Breweries (CUB), which, although headquartered in Melbourne, was bought by the world’s largest brewer AB InBev in 2011, and sold again to Asahi in 2020 for $16bn.
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