CHEERS! to ten years of brewing success
A BREWERY IS CELEBRATING A DECADE SINCE IT BROUGHT BACK BEER TO SUNDERLAND
The final months of the last century witnessed the sad end of a distinguished local era.
Time was called on nearly 200 years of history in July 1999 when the final beer was produced at Sunderland’s landmark Vaux Breweries site.
Despite the brewing side of the company’s operations still making a sizeable £50m annual profit, financiers in the City of London had advised the firm to cease production and concentrate its efforts on its estate of pubs and hotels.
Around 700 jobs were lost and the resulting reorganisation saw the Vaux name quickly disappear from Sunderland’s skyline with the business becoming Swallow Inns and Restaurants.
This in itself was soon bought - or swallowed up, even - by Whitbread Breweries.
Yet thankfully that was far from the end of the story.
Undeterred by an unsuccessful management buyout bid, finance director Mark Anderson and two Vaux colleagues started purchasing the rights to produce famous brands such as Double Maxim and Samson.
The Double Maxim Brewery Company was born and based at offices in Wearfield, on Sunderland Enterprise Park, with Double Maxim itself the first beer to be resurrected and brewed at Stockport’s Robinson’s Brewery.
Mr Anderson recalls: “It was a risk as it was rare and still is for new breweries to buy out old names and keep them going. Usually their unique selling point is to come up with something new.”
Despite its brief demise, drinkers stayed loyal to a brown ale which was first brewed in 1901 to mark the return of the Maxim Gun Detachment from the Boer War.
Ward’s Bitter, originally produced by Vaux sister brewery Ward’s in Sheffield, followed with a second Vaux favourite, Samson brown beer, returning in 2005.
By now firmly established as part of the United Kingdom’s flourishing craft beer market, the company moved south of the river to Rainton Bridge, near Houghton, in 2007 to begin brewing its own beer as the renamed Maxim Brewery.
Mr Anderson, 55, remembers: “To see the first beer produced and taste it and realise it was as it should be was a fantastic moment.
“The heart of abeer business is its brewery. Once the Vaux brewery closed the heart of the business seemed to be ripped out and now it was alive again.”
Orders and awards soon followed as beers new and old were produced for barrel and bottle.
Now employing a team of nine, the brewery produces up to 17,000 pints a week.
Its beers include seasonal ales such as the Great Escape pale ale - “like the movie, it’s on at Christmas,” quips Mr Anderson - and John Bull stout.
Managing director Mr Anderson, who was raised in Sheffield and moved north from Ward’s to Vaux in 1995, says: “Vaux actually produced more stout than Guinness at one time.
“That all changed during the First World when there was restrictions on transport because of the need to save fuel and because alcohol contents were reduced so that factory workers were in
“We want to carry on our success and build on our exports” MARK ANDERSON