Every change of UK brewer since 2022

Why this keeps happening

A foreign brand sold in Britain is usually made here under a licence: the brand owner grants a British brewer the right to make and sell it, for a term. When the term ends the brand can move, and it moves as a whole, from one company's brewery to another's. Nothing about the can needs to change except the small print, and the small print is the part nobody reads.

Two things have made the last four years unusually busy. Carlsberg and Marston's merged their British brewing in 2020 and then spent several years closing and consolidating sites, which moved a long list of brands between towns. And several brand owners have taken their British production back in house or handed it to a different partner.

The four that matter most

Kronenbourg 1664 left Heineken UK for Carlsberg Marston's on a licence effective 1 June 2023, with Heineken contract brewing and packing until production moved across during 2024. It is now recorded at Wolverhampton. This is the brand the Advertising Standards Authority ruled on in 2011 for implying it was made in Alsace.

San Miguel had been brewed by Carlsberg in Northampton since 2009. That arrangement ended and from 2025 the brand passed to Budweiser Brewing Group, part of AB InBev, which brews it at Magor and Samlesbury. The beer on the shelf changed brewer, company and county without changing its label design.

Estrella Damm went the other way. It had been packaged under contract at the Eagle Brewery in Bedford by a series of British owners since 2010. In late 2022 Damm bought the brewery outright, and from 2024 it brews there in its own right rather than contracting the work out. A Spanish brewer now owns a Bedfordshire brewery.

Mythos is the newest and the clearest. It was sold in Britain as a Greek import, in bars and specialist shops, brewed in Thessaloniki. From 2026 Carlsberg Britvic brews it at Northampton, and the UK version is 4.6% against about 5.0% for the Greek beer. The brand did not change. The beer did.

Two more are worth a line. Cruzcampo arrived in the British off-trade in 2023 brewed by Heineken UK in Manchester rather than in Seville. Kirin Ichiban moved from Carlsberg Marston's to Damm's Bedford brewery in 2025, so a Japanese brand is now made in Bedfordshire by a Spanish company.

The full record since 2022

Every entry below is taken from the licence history on the beer's own page, where it carries its source. A beer appears once for each change recorded, so a brand that moved twice appears twice.

What it means for a shopper

Mostly that a beer you checked two years ago may not be the same beer now, and that the answer on a website is only as good as its date. Every entry on this site carries the day it was last checked for that reason. Where a brand has moved recently, the strength is worth re-reading too: a new brewer is an opportunity to change the specification, and several of the moves above coincided with a cut.