BREWERY REVEALS ITS NEW HOME
ANEW brewery and headquarters for SA Brain & Co has been revealed. The family-owned brewing and hospitality business will relocate from its current offices and brewery operation at Crawshay Street in the centre of Cardiff to Courtney House at Pacific Business Park in Cardiff Bay.
The empty building will be transformed to accommodate a brewery on its ground floor with offices above.
SA Brain & Co has been assessing options for a new brewery and office location in Cardiff for over a year, in a process overseen by the Cardiff office of international property advisory firm Cushman & Wakefield.
Having acquired the freehold interest in Courtney House, located on a 1.5-acre site, a change of building use planning application is expected to be submitted to Cardiff council within the next few weeks.
The new operation will extend to just over 31,000 sq ft, of which nearly 20,000 sq ft will be brewingrelated.
Its existing home, subject to planning consent, will be transformed into the Central Quay waterfront regeneration scheme, which over time could see more than two million sq ft of new office, leisure and residential space built immediately alongside the River Taff.
Subject to planning consent, SA Brain’s head office and support centre functions will move into the new site in May or June next year.
And it is anticipated that brewing production will start there in early 2019.
Planning for the first phase of Central Quay, from Cardiff-based property development firm Rightacres, on the existing car-park site of the brewery, will see:
A 270,000 sq ft landmark building which will target companies in the financial and professional services sector; A 200-bedroom hotel; A multi-storey car park for 650 vehicles.
The existing SA Brain site, which extends to around eight acres, could accommodate up to 1.5 million sq ft of mixed-use development.
However, SA Brain has confirmed that it will have a new visitor centre, micro-brewery and pub at its current listed 19th-century built brewhouse which, alongside the iconic Brains branded chimney, will be at the heart of the Central Quay scheme.
Around 200 SA Brain staff at Crawshay Street will be relocating to the new brewery and offices. The company has been at its current home since 1998.
John Rhys, chairman of SA Brain & Co, said: “We are delighted to have secured our new home, which represents an exciting new chapter in our 135-year history of brewing and hospitality retailing from our Cardiff base.”
The firm’s chief executive Scott Waddington said: “Courtney House offers us the ideal facility to construct a modern, fit-for-purpose new brewery, in addition to developing the first floor into a highquality office space.
“With a contract now in place, our effort will turn to the interior design of the building, which we will enhance for our own purposes and use to establish the Brains culture in our new home.
“We are finalising our plans for the brewery, which presents a real opportunity for full modernisation and readying the business for the future.”
On the Central Quay project, Mr Rhys said: “To complement our proposed new brewery and head office in Pacific Business Park, we also envisage developing a new venue within the existing brewhouse building alongside the famous Brains chimney at Crawshay Street, which would encompass a pub, micro-brewery and visitor attraction, to showcase our iconic Welsh brand in a prime city-centre location.”
Rhys James, head of Cushman & Wakefield’s office in Cardiff, said: “Relocating Wales’ most recognised brewing and hospitality business from their historic HQ in Cardiff city centre presented quite a challenge, but also a great opportunity.
“After an extensive exercise scrutinising various existing properties and new-build schemes, we were able to secure Courtney House, which with some modest adaptations will be able to accommodate a new state-of-the-art brewery, whilst also providing modern offices for Brains’ HQ.”
Central Quay will be extended if a surface car park area currently owned by Network Rail immediately south of Cardiff Central railway station and a two-acre site on Penarth Road, currently the location of a BMW car dealership, are also included.
Businesses and residents in the area are being encouraged to give their views on the plans for Central Quay in a pre-planning public consultation exercise.
Plans for the first phase of Central Quay are expected to be submitted to Cardiff council early next year. Subject to approval, the first phase is scheduled for completion in June, 2020.