‘We’d hoped to see a beer duty cut to encourage investment’

0 Kieran Middleton said rising business rates are hurting small firms Kieran Middleton, 45, is a brewer and business development manager at Edinburgh’s Bellfield Brewery, based in Portobello. The brewery, specialising in gluten-free beers, recently celebrated its first anniversary and is looking to expand by opening its own facility in the Portobello area.

He said he was disappointed in the lack of a cut in alcohol duty and believes spiralling business rates may put off investors.

“The rise in beer duty is very disappointing and a blow to an industry that supports thousands of jobs and contributes massively to the economy,” he said.

“We’d hoped to see a duty cut which would have helped to encourage investment. It would have been helpful to small and fledgling craft breweries like ourselves, looking to expand.

“A cut in beer duty would also have helped to offset the impact of the weak pound, [which is] putting pressure on the cost of imported raw materials like hops.

“At the moment, like other businesses, we’ve experienced a steady increase in rates over time – that’s to be expected, but the recent hike feels massively out of proportion with previous years. The £435m fund to help businesses cope with these rises is a start, but to string that out across the UK, it’s going to be stretched extremely thin.

“It seems like pubs have had the raw end of the deal for a while now when it comes to high rates – you only have to look at all the well-established ones that have been forced to close in the last few years to see the effect it has.

“I think a £1,000 rebate for pubs is a start – in theory that means there’s more money for them to spend on products, but it doesn’t always work like that.

“We’re currently aiming to raise £500,000 to expand and create additional jobs to meet the strong demand that we are experiencing for our products across the UK and across Europe and south-east Asia.

“This was definitely a Budget that favoured the much bigger players in the alcohol industry.

“At the moment, the American craft [brewing] industry is already around eight to ten years ahead of ours, but craft microbrewing is a burgeoning industry in the UK and I would have liked and expected to see more done to give it a bit of a boost.”