Adnams, one of Britain’s remaining handful of family brewers, on Thursday called on the Government to reform a system that the company claims favours start-ups and penalises bigger firms.
Chairman Jonathan Adnams welcomed a new Government review into Small Breweries Relief — a system that gives firms producing fewer than around 10 million pints a year significantly reduced tax rates.
The Suffolk firm, founded in 1872, is too big to benefit from the relief.
If Adnams, which makes Ghost Ship ale, paid the same duty rates as its smaller competitors, it would save about £7 million per year.
The Small Breweries Relief was one of the reasons cited by Fuller’s for agreeing to offload its beer arm in January, Adnams said. Other family companies to have sold brewing divisions include Young’s.
Sales at Adnams rose 5.6% to £78.9 million last year, but it made a loss of £877,000 compared with a pretax profit of £1.5 million. That was owing to one-off costs and investments into the business.
