Not Pubs: Guinness Merger Timeline

I haven't seen a timeline of the many acquisitions that Guinness made in the 50s and 60s which had the end result of reducing regional variations in Irish beer and the eventual closure of every pre-craft-era brewery outside of Cork and James's Gate.

However, part of the reason for this is that its rather hard to nail down dates, so don't trust this to actually be that accurate. 

1952

Guinness of Dublin purchases Cherrys of New Ross

1954

Smithwicks of Kilkenny purchase the Great Northern Brewery of Dundalk

1955

Guinness purchases the defunct Strangmans Brewery of Waterford.

Cherrys production is moved to Strangmans, New Ross closes.

Ind Coope of the UK purchase a large, but non-controlling stake in Macardle Moore of Dundalk

1956

Cherry Cairnes Distribution Ltd formed to produce and distribute Phoenix Ale. Cairnes of Drogheda is at this stage an independent company

1957

Perrys Rathdowney bought, nominally by Cherrys

1959

Cairnes brewery closed in 1959 and sold immediately to Cherrys (and hence Guinness).  Cairnes Ltd refocused on their (Prestons) distillery

Irish Ale Breweries Ltd (IAB) is formed to merge the operations of Cherrys, Perrys and Macardle Moore. This company is 66.6% owned by Guinness and 33.3% owned by Ind Coope, reflecting their input to the merger

Smithwicks lease the Great Northern Brewery to Guinness for an initial period of five years. The newspaper reports on this imply Smithwick is not in a solid financial state following extremely poor sales in 1958.

1960

IAB now own 100% of the Macardle Moore company

1961

IAB purchase Bulmers of Clonmel, who rapidly enter cooperation with Showerings, a sister company of Ind Coope

1962

Drogheda site closed entirely

1964 

Guinness gain a controlling share of the still publicly listed Smithwicks

1965

Guinness fully take over Smithwicks

1966 

Smithwicks transferred to IAB

1967

Showerings take majority stake in Bulmers

Perrys brewery closes, after but probably not due to a strike. Production moved to Waterford.

1970

C&C takes full ownership of Bulmers.

1988

Guinness takes full ownership of IAB.

2000

Macardle Moore brewery closes.

~2004

Waterford production moves to new facility

2013

Great Northern brewery closes

Kilkenny brewery closes

Replacement Waterford brewery closes.

Of all the range of products bought in through all this process, I believe only Macardles and a heavily modified Smithwicks are still in production, at James's Gate. Phoenix survived until this century, Perrys possibly until the 1980s but other products - Great Northerns' Amber Ale, the Perrys and Cherrys products and so on faded out quite quickly.