Molson Coors retires brews
Budget brands being phased out including High Life Light, Milwaukee’s Best Premium and more.
Molson Coors is retiring a number of under-performing budget beer brands as the global brewer continues to shift its focus to core brands, premium brews and hard seltzers whose sales are soaring in the U.S.
The brand retirements have been in the offing for some time and are part of a revitalization plan the Chicago-based company announced nearly two years ago.
The retiring of the brands was discussed July 29 during the company’s quarterly earnings call with financial analysts.
Molson Coors has a huge presence in Milwaukee and Wisconsin, with two breweries and an office complex in Milwaukee and a brewery in Chippewa Falls.
The company’s Miller branded products are served seemingly everywhere in Wisconsin, from professional sports stadiums and arenas to church festivals and community events in nearly every corner of the state.
“In recent months in the U.S., Molson Coors paused production of a number of smaller, low-margin, slow-moving economy brands and SKUs,” said Marty Maloney, a company spokesman, via email. “This allowed us to improve our brewing efficiency and stabilize inventories of our core brands – and it also premiumized our portfolio and improved our margins.”
SKU stands for stock keeping unit and is a way that product manufacturers track inventory and sales of what they make.
“Premiumized” describes how higher-end, premium-priced products continue to make inroads in the U.S. adult beverages market.
“Premiumization is here to stay at Molson Coors,” Molson Coors CEO Gavin Hattersley told investment analysts in July. “We’re going to invest bigger behind our fast-growing global hard seltzer portfolio. And we’re going to permanently streamline our smaller portfolio of legacy brands.”
It will also continue to invest in its core brands such as Miller Lite and Coors Light, each of which gained market share in the U.S. premium light beer segment during the company’s most recent quarter, Hattersley said.
Here’s the list of brands being phased out:
High Life Light Milwaukee’s Best Premium Henry Weinhard’s Private Reserve Keystone Ice
Hamm’s Special Light Keylightful
Icehouse Edge
Magnum
Mickey’s Ice
Steel Reserve Triple Export Olde English HG 800 Hattersley said the company understands that fans of some of the brands — and some Molson Coors distributors — will not be thrilled with the decision.
“While economy brands have typically not been a focus of the investment community, distributors who sell brands like Magnum and Mickey’s Ice are going to feel it when they’re discontinued,” Hattersley said. “So our local sales teams are partnering with distributors and retailers on a market-bymarket basis on exit plans and to identify swaps that make sense.”
Molson Coors is shifting to take advantage of the red hot hard seltzer market.
As of mid-2020, hard seltzer as a retail category was growing at a rate of 215%, according to market research firm Nielsen.