Sharp’s Brewery has certainly come a long way in 16+ years. Started up as a hobby by local businessman Bill Sharp; the Rock, Cornwall – based brewery has moved from micro to regional brewer in less than a decade. 

It now brews 75,000 barrels of cask beer a year. It is one of the fastest-growing breweries in Britain and has long left behind the status of a micro. It is, indisputably, a regional company, until recently vying with St Austell Brewery, as the biggest producer of cask ale in Cornwall. Sharp’s is still on the same industrial estate it started on, but now occupies most of it, not just one small building.

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This was the headline from Marketing Week in October 2008. The article said AB InBev had remained silent amidst speculation it planned to launch a new variant named Stella Artois Black and denied plans to introduce a product with a higher ABV than its flagship brand.

The new beer, which was reportedly due to be launched in 2009 was rumoured to be a 5.5% ABV beer (I use that term loosely); higher than the current 5% ABV Stella Artois brand.

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If an industry is seeing a decline in demand of circa 8% per annum in its product, is suffering from excess supply of that product and there are many suppliers of the product, what would normally happen to the general price level of that product?

The answer is pretty straightforward — the price would go down. Is there any industry where this general fact does not apply? Well, only one — it’s the wholesale price of beer in the UK.

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