Craft beer company goes under

With stores in London, Canterbury and Margate, craft beer merchant business The Bottle Shop has collapsed into administration following a series of challenging trading conditions in a competitive market.

Administrators have been appointed to handle the insolvency of the business, and to find a new buyer to take over the company and save it from liquidation.

Andrew Morgan, who founded the company in 2010 at a farmers’ market in Kent, claimed the reason for the business’s present downfall was due to sales falling “well under forecast” during the difficult winter trading season.

In 2017, The Bottle Shop raised £400,000 in a Crowdcube fundraising campaign with the aim of opening two new retail shops in London but was hit when a major supplier ceased trade with them shortly after.

Morgan said: “This was a torpedo blow to our forecasts and though the team valiantly and brilliantly battled to overcome this, when another top-three brewery dropped us with no notice last year, it didn’t help our situation.

“We brought on a consultant to help with this and quickly realised the extent of the financial legacy we were carrying from the breweries we’d lost. I set about finding a partner and came incredible close to announcing something very positive, but it wasn’t meant to be.”

Despite the financial shortcomings, Morgan noted that the company experienced its highest ever turnover in November 2018, with a positive trajectory for December and January 2019 as well.

He said: “We made a lot of people very happy since 2010 and hope that whoever ends up buying the business carries on our desire to burn brightly and never settle for anything other than the best.”

Potential buyers are invited to express their interests immediately.

For more news stories about administrations click here. For all our administrations listings, click here.

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