Labatt takes pass on Lakeport Brewery bid: Minhas

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Published: April 28, 2010

Calgary beverage firm Minhas Creek says its offer to buy the soon-to-be-shuttered Lakeport Brewery in Hamilton has been rejected by Lakeport’s owner.

And the spurned buyer said it plans to respond by looking into the possibility of its own brewery in the city.

Labatt in March announced it would close the Lakeport brewery by April 30, putting over 140 employees out of work. The decision is reportedly due in part to U.S. competition regulators blocking Labatt’s owner, Anheuser-Busch InBev, from importing its Canadian production into the U.S. market.

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According to the Hamilton Spectator last month, the lost U.S. market left Labatt with substantial surplus beer on its hands. Labatt, which paid $201.4 million for the plant and Lakeport’s other assets in 2007, instead decided to absorb the surplus by closing the Hamilton brewery and consolidating production into its London, Ont. plant.

Ravinder and Manjit Minhas, whose company’s beer and beverage brands include Boxer, Minhas Creek, Lakeshore Creek, Tundra and Corsairs, said in a release Wednesday they had written to Anheuser-Busch InBev, offering to buy “the majority of the brewery assets.”

The brother/sister team said their offer didn’t include equipment Labatt said it planned to move to another facility, nor did it include the Lakeport brand or any other Labatt-owned trademarks. They added they “had already budgeted up to $50 million for this expansion.”

“Scrap metal”

Minhas Creek said the response from Anheuser-Busch InBev this week was that it “would not sell any of the equipment and would be using it in their other facilities.”

Furthermore, Minhas Creek said on its website, Lakeport’s owners moved up their timetable to close the facility two weeks ahead of schedule.

The Calgary bidders said they “simply don’t believe it is practical to retrofit this equipment” and instead, they “suspect the vast majority of this brewing equipment will sit in the Hamilton facility and will simply collect dust until it is cut out for scrap metal.”

Minhas Creek added on its website that its purchase proposal had moral support from the community, the Lakeport workers’ union and the Lakeport plant’s landlord, the Hamilton Port Authority.

However, the Minhas family said in its release it has “decided to pursue the potential of placing a brewery in Hamilton to continue its brewing legacy.

“We have a strong interest in opening a brewery in Hamilton, Lakeport site or not,” the company said on its website, urging public support for its plans.

The Spectator on Wednesday said three brewers and three other companies are reportedly interested in the Lakeport facility.

The newspaper also said Labatt had offered to make up to $2 million in lease and tax payments for “any tenant that wasn’t a brewer and would give Lakeport workers first shot at new jobs.”

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