Pre-pack administration sees Liverpool bar and brewer continue to trade

Hospitality business Love Lane Brewery has secured investment from Cheshire retailer Nick Canning as part of a pre-pack administration.

The administration, handled by Steven Muncaster and Steve Clancy in the Manchester office of Kroll, means the Liverpool bar and brewery business will stay open.

Love Lane Brewing Ltd, a subsidiary of Higsons 1780, went into administration on June 20, following which the company changed name to LLB Realisations Ltd. The new company is Love Lane Brewery. Higsons 1780 continues to trade.

Love Lane Brewery serves as a brewery, a gin distillery, a bar and restaurant and events space at its site in Liverpool’s Baltic Triangle.

Canning has been appointed a director of Higsons 1780 after the company received a £300,000 investment for 60,000 shares at the start of June. He had previously held a minority stake of nearly 28,000 shares in Higsons 1780.

He is also a director of the new subsidiary company, Love Lane Brewery.

Canning spent 15 years at Iceland Foods, ending as joint managing director after spells as chairman of the company’s charitable foundation and its subsidiary Cooltrader.

Canning joins Love Lane Brewery’s founder and chief executive, Stephen Crawley, who has more than 25 years’ experience in the brewing industry including as managing director of Edinburgh’s Caledonian Brewing Company, which he left in 2013.

Work began in 2016 on transforming an old rubber factory in the Baltic Triangle into a vibrant 18,000 hectolitre brewery, capable of brewing 3.2 million pints.

The hospitality venture was launched in 2017 as H1780 in recognition of Higsons, the famous Liverpool beer which was first brewed in Liverpool in 1780. A revamped Higsons pint was one of the launchpads for the new business.

It then changed its name the following year to Love Lane Brewing.

The company has been contacted by TheBusinessDesk.com but has not responded.