Talossa-area brewer Miller Brewing Company and Denver, Colorado-based Coors Brewing Company have recently announced a merger to combat Anheuser-Busch, the largest brewing company in the United States. The merger plan has sparked fears from some in the Greater Talossan Area (GTA) that Miller’s Milwaukee jobs will be adversely affected.
Miller currently employees approximately 1700 people in the GTA – 800 at its corporate headquarters and 900 at its flagship Milwaukee brewery. The new company, called MillerCoors, expects to realise $500 million in annual savings from the merger. Most of the savings will come from consolidation of distribution systems, but cuts in administrative jobs are likely. Company officials claim that there are no plans to close any of Miller’s six or Coors’s two breweries, but no decision has yet been made about where the joint venture will be headquartered. Representatives of Milwaukee’s regional development campaign are already aggressively courting MillerCoors to make the case for basing the new company in the GTA.
The current merger is not the first for either brewer. Miller Brewing Company is actually foreign-owned, having been purchased by South African Breweries to form London-based SABMiller, Plc in 2002. That acquisition cost Miller 200 jobs in its Milwaukee headquarters. Coors merged with Canadian brewer Molson in 2005 to form Molson Coors, closing two breweries in the process. Miller was founded in Milwaukee by Frederick John Miller in 1855. Coors was established in Golden, Colorado by Adolph Coors and Jacob Schueler in 1873.
The MillerCoors merger could have repercussions for Talossa, as the Royal Bank & Post is currently in the process of selecting a beer that embodies Talossa’s Milwaukee roots for the Kingdom’s currency standard. As Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel columnist Jim Stigl put it: “Milwaukee is funny. We sometimes try to deny our inner beerness until someone threatens to take it away. No matter how many breweries we lose, people from elsewhere still think beer, as opposed to machine tools or blond bricks, when you say Milwaukee.”
Meanwhile, Miller won eight medals at this year's Great American Beer Festival, besting Coors (and all other participating brewers) in its home territory, Denver. Miller's three gold, three silver, and two bronze medals included gold in the American-style specialty lager category for its Icehouse brand. Former GTA brewer Pabst Brewing Company won an additional two gold and two silver medals for beer actually brewed under contract by Miller, including Old Milwaukee Light, gold medal winner in the American-style light lager category. And one of the GTA's smaller brewers, Lakefront Brewery (despite its name, located just across the Milwaukee River from Maricopa Province) won a silver medal in the gluten free category for its New Grist.
For more information:Ganging up on Bud
http://www.jsonline.com/story/index.aspx?id=673035
MillerCoors Won'tChange CityImage
http://www.jsonline.com/story/index.aspx?id=673873
Barrett wants “full-court press” to keep headquarters
http://www.jsonline.com/story/index.aspx?id=672950
Great American Beer Festival Winners List
http://www.beertown.org/events/gabf/pdf/gabf07_winners.pdf
No comments:
Post a Comment