Bernard Ginns: Old gold rush brewer in for John Smith’s

SABMILLER does not have any brewing operations in the UK, the media relations manager informed me rather briskly yesterday.

I was just checking. But that could change if the South African brewing giant decides to increase its bid for Heineken.

The Dutch company said on Sunday it was approached by larger rival SABMiller about a potential takeover but that its controlling shareholder intended to keep the company independent.

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Heineken said it consulted with its majority shareholder and concluded that SABMiller’s proposal was “non-actionable”.

“The Heineken family has informed SABMiller, Heineken and Heineken Holding of its intention to preserve the heritage and identity of Heineken as an independent company,” it said in a statement.

Heineken employs around 2,000 people at eight sites in the UK, including breweries or cider plants at Edinburgh, Livingston, Manchester, London, Hereford, Ledbury and Tadcaster.

Heineken employs 300 people at Tadcaster. They work in brewing, sales and support services.

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The brewery makes Murphy’s Stout, Newcastle Brown Ale and John Smith’s, which is Britain’s best-selling ale.

The original John Smith started his empire in 1847 when, according to Heineken’s marketing spiel, he began brewing for the town’s thirsty mill workers and factory hands.

At the time, most Yorkshire mill towns had two or three breweries.

Just a few survive today - names like Timothy Taylor, Samuel Smith, Theakston - and many remain in the control of the founding families.

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Heineken’s controlling shareholders are the De-Carvalho family with a 50.1 per cent stake in the Amsterdam-based business.

A further 12.5 percent is held by Mexico’s FEMSA, which owns the world’s largest Coca-Cola bottler and the OXXO convenience store group as well as its important stake in Heineken.

Heineken is valued at around £27bn, compared with £55bn for SABMiller.

Analysts see the move by SABMiller, which is listed on the London Stock Exchange, as a pre-emptive measure in order to prevent itself from becoming a takeover target for Stella Artois maker AB InBev.

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If SABMiller chooses to increase its offer, might the De-Carvalho family members change their minds and decide that the bid is “actionable”? Everything in this world has its price.

SABMiller, whose own brewing story dates back to the Johannesburg gold rush of 1886, could yet find itself acquiring some UK operations and a valuable piece of Yorkshire’s business history.

* YESTERDAY morning I caught up with Darren Forshaw, one of the founding partners of Endless, the Yorkshire-based private equity firm.

It has been a busy summer for the LLP, completing half a dozen deals since July.

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Aside from business, we discussed Yorkshire’s superb staging of the Grand Depart and the question of legacy.

Mr Forshaw’s suggestion has some merit: why not build a velodrome in Leeds?

Yorkshire should be the centre of British cycling; it is home to the challenging and diverse terrain of the Yorkshire Dales, it has a history of producing champions both male and female and it is filled with cycling enthusiasts. Five million of them, if you count everyone who came out to cheer the “grandest ever” Grand Depart.

At present, Manchester gets the spoils with its National Cycling Centre.

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The public and private sector could join forces to fund an even better velodrome this side of the Pennines. The velodrome for the London Olympcs cost £100m. We could do it for half of that. It could be called the Veritydome.

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