The year Coors arrived in the world’s brewing capital
IT was on Christmas Eve in 2001 that American brewer Coors started its journey in Burton.
The brewing giant caught the brewing world and Burton by surprise when it was unveiled as the new owner of the Carling Company.
The long-running battle to secure the future of what was Bass Brewers ended with the announcement on Christmas Eve Coors had paid Belgium-based Interbrew £1.2 billion for the company headquarters in Burton.
Although the sale, forced by the UK’S Department of Trade and Industry, had been well publicised Coors was not one of the names to feature on the list of favourites but was quickly thrust into the UK spotlight.
Well established in the United States for more than 125 years Coors was to add UK tradition to a classic “Go west, young man” American success story not without controversy or its ups and downs.
Impressed by the purity and quality of the water from the Rocky Mountains, German-born Adolph Coors set up the brewery in Golden, Colorado, in America’s mid-west in 1873.
His own $2,000 was backed by $18,000 from Denver entrepreneur Jacob Schueler to open the Golden Brewery.
Like the founders of Bass, in Burton, Coors had to fight stiff competition from within his home base as his was one of seven breweries in a town of just 50,000 people.
In the first year the company sold 3,500 barrels at a time when native Americans and the US cavalry regularly and fatally clashed.
By 1880 Coors had bought out his partner to become the sole proprietor of his business and create a brewing dynasty.
By 1890 barrel sales had topped almost 18,000 and Coors was a millionaire but years of hardship were heralded by the introduction of prohibition in Colorado in 1916.
The outlawing of the production and sale of alcohol on the first day of the year was marked by the brewery dumping 561 barrels of beer — almost 140,000 pints — into a nearby creek.
The brewery was converted into a producer of malted milk and the company also branched out into a porcelain business it retains today, as keeping the company afloat absorbed much of the founder’s final years.
Mystery surrounds the circumstances of his death in 1929, only four years before national prohibition was lifted.
Coors was one of the few breweries to reopen after the repeal and was run by Adolph Coors junior, one of the founder’s sons.
Production dropped off during the Second World War due to the lack of supplies, but the global movement of American GIS during those years spread the name, taste and market for the brewer.
Tragedy struck again a decade when Adolph Coors the third was kidnapped and murdered at the age of 44 but when Adolph Coors junior died at the age of 86 in 1970 the brewery was producing seven million barrels a year.
The family heritage continued with leadership passing into the hands of his son William (Bill) Coors.
The tenure had seen other major developments such as the pioneering introduction of aluminium cans in 1959.
The company was floated in 1975 but its chequered history persisted as it was also the first year its production did not sell out and sales dropped by a million barrels.
In 2001, the business was still very much family run with Bill Coors chairman of the parent Adolph Coors Company and Peter Coors chairman of Coors Brewing Company.
William (Bill) Coors died in October 2018, while Peter Coors officially retired as an employee from the now-named Molson Coors Brewing Company in December 2019, but remains as board chairman.
In the year 2000, the year before the firm’s link to Burton, Coors brewed and sold a record 24,150,000 barrels, making it the third largest in the United States.