Another day, another brewery investment. This time it’s not Big Beer purchasing a majority share of a brewery, but rather an investment group with big craft beer visions, buying part of Oregon’s Ninkasi Brewing. Today, a new investment collective was born, Legacy Breweries. Ninkasi is just the first brewery of a planned expansion across the United States for Legacy Breweries.
Ninkasi is proud to announce that we are in the process of forming a new craft brewery driven partnership model that will allow us to remain independent while offering our capabilities and resources to other craft breweries in the industry. As the craft beer business continues to be incredibly dynamic and subject to continuous change, we are excited to be able to offer like-minded breweries an alternative opportunity to “Big Beer” or simple financial partners. By partnering with EPR Properties, and the individuals at Legacy Breweries, we will be able to create a coalition of other craft producers, combine strengths, and make available the world-class brewing and quality capabilities that Ninkasi has developed while continuing to build on one of the Craft Industry’s biggest strengths: collaboration. A model that allows us to remain independent, continue to participate with the Brewers Association to keep building the industry, and enables us to join forces with other like-minded brewers is exciting for all of us here! As we continue to build out the model with other partners, there will be more announcements to come, cheers! – Nikos and Jamie
What’s an investment collective? Some craft beer breweries you’re probably familiar with are part of these investment collectives or investment groups. The breweries are still considered craft breweries as defined by the Brewers Association. These investment groups own all or part of the craft breweries in their portfolios.
- Canarchy: Oskar Blues, Utah Brewers Cooperative, Cigar City Brewing, Deep Ellum, Perrin Brewing, and Three Weavers.
- Artisanal Brewing Ventures (aka Craft Revolution LLC): Victory Brewing, Southern Tier and Sixpoint Brewery.
- Gambrinus: Spoetzl Brewery, Trumer Brewery, and Bridgeport Brewing.
- Enjoy Beer: Abita Brewing.