Bottler bought by brewery
A YORKSHIRE brewery has bought a bottling company as part of its expansion plans.
Old Bear Brewery, in Keighley, has bought Re-Cap, a social enterprise bottling company, for an undisclosed sum.
Re-Cap, which uses recycled bottles only, was based in Calderdale Business Park, Halifax, but has now moved to the brewery.
The move sees Re-Cap’s operations supervisor Nick Howard joining the brewery to overseeing the bottling operation.
Ian Cowling, Old Bear’s owner and head brewer, said: “Over the past year we have expanded our range of bottles to cover all our seven cask beers, plus our monthly specials, and this has been helped in a big way logistically by Re-Cap only being about 10 miles away.
“When the opportunity came up to bring it in-house it was too good to a chance to miss and it’s already hard at work with our Yorkshire Day Ale, which is the official beer of Yorkshire Day, on 1 August.
“Re-Cap collects empty bottles from numerous pubs and clubs around West Yorkshire, where they are then washed and sterilised before being refilled.
“With Yorkshire Day Ale being a flagship beer we are using bottles with flip tops, similar to Grolsch, and each mayor and mayoresses from the whole of Yorkshire will receive a bottle at the Yorkshire Day luncheon, which is being held in Guisborough.”
Old Bear’s bottled beers now also come in pint measures as opposed to the metric 500ml.
Mr Cowling added: “We still serve pint measures in pubs, so we think that it’s appropriate that you should still be able to get an imperial pint bottle of beer.”
