Backers save brewery from Covid crash
‘IF WE DIDN’T HAVE THEM WE’D HAVE GONE BUST’ SAYS BOSS
THE boss of Lord’s Brewery in Golcar says it would have gone bust were it not for its investors saving the day after the pandemic devastated it.
Operations director John Slumbers said the fledgling brewery, which has gone from strength to strength since opening in 2015, was on its knees as turnover disappeared almost overnight.
He said it had been growing at 60 per cent last year but this all came to an abrupt halt when the coronavirus crisis struck in March this year.
John said: “We are only managing to survive – we were probably operating at 5pc of our turnover – because we have some very good investors. If we didn’t have them we would have gone bust, 100pc.
“It was so hard to take as we were really going some and were selling beer from Brighton to Newcastle and then it all came to a shuddering halt.
“The first day of lockdown we lost £7,000 of orders. I thought that was horrific but it got worse and the following day we lost twice as much. Where we struggled was that we weren’t in any supermarket chains selling our products, something that we are trying to get into.
“Fortunately, our online sales have done really well and have kept us going and kept us focused.
“And we have done really well with our social media and YouTube videos. We have a firm who cans our beer for us but we are looking at creating our own canning process, which seems the way to go, and we may end up buying a pub in the future to expand our brand.
“We have had no help from anyone. Breweries seem to have fallen through the gaps in terms of grants being offered by government and Kirklees Council.”
The Charlesworth Group, one of the brewery’s key investors, is a wellknown local business that through its subsidiary Charlesworth Business Growth Services provides support to local independent businesses in the wider Huddersfield region.
It put in £150,000 to support the business a couple of years ago having identified the business as having strong growth potential in its sector. It is understood to have put in another £50,000 over the past few months.
The support the group offers is in the guise of loans, equity and other nonfinancial support, such as the recent launch of its virtual local high street, The Village (www.thevillagehuddersfield.co.uk), which helps local shops and traders gain customers.
Charlesworth Business Growth Services director, Richard Charlesworth, said: “This additional investment is testament to the underlying strength of the Lord’s business and the steps it is already taking to reposition itself in the marketplace, by shifting production and product delivery predominantly into can-based shipments.”