Electric Picnic vs craft beer: how Irish microbreweries are fighting back against the industry’s biggest players

You can see the tops of the Electric Picnic’s fairground attractions from the Ballykilcavan farm.
It is 2.5km as the crow flies from the festival in Stradbally, Co Laois. The 440 hectare farm has been in the Walsh family since 1639. The family grow their own barley which, since 2018, is now being used to make beer for Ballykilcavan Brewing Company on site. The water for the beer comes from a well on the farm and there is a hop garden of both the bittering and aroma varieties, which is harvested every October.
Since Ballykilcavan’s foundation, David Walsh-Kemmis has been trying to sell his beers at the Electric Picnic festival without success. Last year he went public and questioned how an event, which make a virtue of its sustainability, would not allow a local brewery to sell on site. He did not get a response.
In response to a query from The Irish Times this year, Electric Picnic promoter Melvin Benn was blunt. “I don’t like the beer. Does that ever occur to anybody? I’ve tasted it. I don’t even like it. Why would I invite them to be here when I don’t even like the stuff? I’ll choose what beer we have and I hope people like it. I like what we have got.”
The choice for Electric Picnic goers was Heineken products, which has been an “official partner” of the festival for many years. To paraphrase Henry Ford, you can have any beer at Electric Picnic as long as its from the Heineken portfolio, which includes Heineken, Heineken 0.0, Birra Moretti, Orchard Thieves and Murphy’s stout. If you like craft beer, you are out of luck.
A spokesman for Heineken confirmed that the company has exclusive rights to sell beer at Electric Picnic. “Heineken has been supporting live events in Ireland for decades and has invested millions of euros to support live music, sporting events and local festivals. It is standard practice within the sector that the event operator will offer exclusive pouring rights to sponsors.”
If Benn thought his outburst against Ballykilcavan would settle the matter for good, he was mistaken. Walsh-Kemmis could not buy the publicity that ensued.
“I have to stand over the quality of our beer,” he says. “You spend years building up a business and then somebody comes in with a big platform, a lot of power and says he doesn’t like the beer.
“What has heartened me is the complete backlash against that. Ninety nine per cent of the social media has been positive for us. The support in the town of Stradbally has been fantastic. The phone has been hopping with people saying they were absolutely disgusted by those comments.
“We are a very small operation. In terms of PR we couldn’t have bought it even if we had all the money in the world.”
Ballykilcavan puts the micro into microbrewery. There is just the owner and two employees. They brew twice a week, 30 weeks of the year, producing about 50,000 litres of beer a year.
Even if he wanted to, he couldn’t supply all of Electric Picnic. A concession with three or four beer lines would be enough, he states. “If we got 1 per cent of sales of Electric Picnic, I’d retire. It would be huge for us,” he says.
Still, Walsh-Kemmis was able to take advantage of his proximity to the festival by providing glamping services independent of Electric Picnic to festivalgoers.
Another local festival, Emo’s Forest Fest, invited Ballykilcavan and another independent brewery on site this July. It was a valuable experience, says Walsh-Kemmis. He sold a lot of beer and got his product in front of drinkers who otherwise might not have heard of them.
Other boutique festivals allow independent breweries on site. At The Big Grill in Dublin’s Herbert Park last week, 11 independent breweries sold their beer.
The David v Goliath nature of the tiny microbrewery against the big festival is a microcosm of the problems small craft beer brewers and distilleries have against the two biggest players in the Irish market, Diageo and Heineken.
Electric Picnic is by no means the only festival or music venue where this duopoly dominate. The 3Arena, the Aviva Stadium and Croke Park have signed similar deals. Nor is it just an Irish issue. Big beer has muscled in as the official partner of sporting events such as the football and rugby world cups.
“We are not stupid, we know how it works,” says Joe Donnelly of Rascals Brewery in Inchicore in Dublin. “We were at the Rugby World Cup. Asahi has pouring rights and that’s all that you could get.”
If a music festival, pub or club is offered a lot of money for exclusivity, it is hard to turn down that money, he says. “The pity is that they can’t control 95 per cent and leave the 5 per cent for local independent beers. Then everybody would be happy.”
Recent figures show a long-term and steep fall in alcohol consumption across the western world. In Ireland alcohol consumption is down 31 per cent since the start of the century. Young people do not have the thirst previous generations had. It makes for a challenging environment for the whole industry.
Pub closures are also a serious factor in the current landscape. According to the Drinks Industry Group of Ireland, a quarter of all pubs in the State, more than 2,000 in total, have closed their doors since 2005. Drinking at home is compounding the problem for pubs and clubs.
A Bord Bia report last year demonstrated that consumption of beer had fallen 2.1 per cent since 2017, but Irish craft beer sales climbed 13.5 per cent over the same period.
There were, as of last September, 79 independent microbrewers in the State, but their share of the market remains minuscule, going from 2.9 per cent in 2017 to 3.4 per cent in 2022. The churn is high. Twenty microbreweries entered the market between 2018 and 2023, and 16 left. It’s a tough business.
“They are threatened by our sector. The data is there. Local beers have experienced growth in the last two years rest of the drinking sector is contracting,” says Donnelly. “We enjoy the fight, we box clever. We emphasise personal relationship and after-sales service.”
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In order to retain their market share, macrobreweries have brought out new products with huge marketing budgets. One of them was Island’s Edge, a smoother stout aimed at 18- to 35-year-olds, produced by Heineken even though it already had two stouts in its portfolio. It was axed by the company last November, after just two years.
“It was a massive blunder to take up more space in pubs when every Irish brewery has at least one stout,” says Mr Donnelly. “Nobody was drinking it. Publicans couldn’t give away free kegs.”
Suspicion that macrobrewers are engaging in unfair practices is universal in the craft beer sector; proving it is another thing. In 2018 in a speech in the Dáil, the then Labour Party leader, Alan Kelly, excoriated the large companies.
“They go to the largest pub in each town, the opinion forming pub, and try to influence it. They offer to do a deal with that publican that if he takes out the rest, or at least takes them off draught, they will look after him. I have a list in my hand. Basically every county in Ireland is on it.”
Among the practices he alleged were “telling publicans they will give them funds, will pay for refurbishment, give them free kegs and event cash as long as they get rid of the other brands”.
One pub in Cork had 19 of 21 taps from the same beer company. How could that be, he asked. A subsidiary of Heineken had been fined in Greece “in the tens of millions” for anticompetitive practices. Such practices should be investigated more vigorously in Ireland, he suggested.
The Independent Craft Brewers of Ireland has set up a working group on anticompetitive practices headed by Richard Siberry of Black Donkey Brewing.
The Competition and Consumer Protection Commission has confirmed it is investigating alleged anticompetitive practices in the industry. It told The Irish Times: “[We] can confirm that a complaint was made to [us] alleging anticompetitive practices in the hospitality and beverage sector.
“The complaint was referred for screening to our enforcement divisions. If the CCPC finds any evidence of potential anticompetitive practices, it may then decide to launch a full investigation.”
A source within the craft beer industry said the complaint was made by a whistleblower but the company involved was not discovered. Neither was the nature of the complaints made by the whistleblower disclosed to the industry.
The source said the industry responded by doing a series of sit-down interviews with a commission official and providing documentation to back up their claim that uncompetitive practices were taking place. They have yet to receive the commission’s ruling on the matter.
“It comes down to being illegal or being unfair,” says Libby Carton, chairwoman of the Independent Craft Brewers of Ireland.
“It is very difficult. Dominant players have money to throw around. You can’t blame publicans for doing deals with big beer companies. We are never going to blame the publicans because we are all working together. It is a catch-22 situation.”
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