A diary entry on SIBA’s improved 2026 brewery tracker figures, the specific damage BrewDog and Innis & Gunn’s troubles have done to Scotland, and why national recovery data doesn’t always match what you’re watching happen locally
I run a small taproom that’s somehow, against what felt like genuinely long odds this time last year, still standing, and this week the latest SIBA figures came through showing the UK’s brewery closure rate has slowed dramatically, net losses down to sixteen breweries in the first half of this year compared to a brutal hundred and thirty-seven across the whole of last year. I should be properly celebrating. I’ve spent most of the week instead feeling a genuinely uncomfortable mix of relief and guilt I wasn’t fully prepared for.
What The National Numbers Actually Show
Net closures have averaged less than one brewery a week so far this year, compared to nearly three a week throughout the whole of 2025, a genuinely significant improvement that SIBA’s own chief executive is describing as encouraging tentative stabilisation after what were, by any honest account, several brutal consecutive years for independent brewing in this country.
Why I Can’t Just Read That Number And Feel Simple Relief
Because it’s not evenly distributed, not remotely, and the place hit hardest this particular year happens to be exactly where I am. Scotland lost nine breweries net in the first half of this year alone, considerably worse than every other region, and a meaningful chunk of that damage traces directly back to the administrations of BrewDog and Innis and Gunn, two names that, whatever anyone’s actual opinion of either brand’s direction in recent years, genuinely mattered to how this whole industry built its reputation over the past two decades.
What Watching Those Two Specific Companies Struggle Has Actually Felt Like From Where I’m Standing
Complicated, honestly. I have genuinely mixed feelings about both brands’ more recent trajectories, but there’s no separating my personal opinion of a company’s direction from the very real, very local damage watching two of the sector’s biggest Scottish names falter has done to supplier confidence, distributor relationships, and frankly the general mood among every small operator like me who’s spent years building a business in their shadow.
A Lawyer’s Quote That’s Stuck With Me All Week
Someone from an Edinburgh law firm described what’s happening as a structural barbell forming in the industry, the biggest global brewers on one end, small genuinely local operators on the other, with exactly the kind of mid-sized, previously beloved independent names like BrewDog and Innis and Gunn increasingly squeezed out of the middle. I keep turning that image over, because it names something I’ve felt without quite having the vocabulary for.
What The Positive Regional Numbers Elsewhere Actually Mean To Me
The North West, South East, and Wales each grew their brewery numbers this year, genuinely good news for those regions, and I’m glad for every operator down there watching their local numbers finally turn around. But reading good regional news that isn’t my region’s news is a genuinely strange, slightly isolating experience, watching a national headline improve while your own specific corner of the map keeps bleeding.
Why I’ve Actually Decided To Stay Cautiously Hopeful Anyway
SIBA’s own leadership has been careful to frame this slowdown as tentative rather than any kind of full recovery, and profitability, taxation, and pub access remain genuinely serious ongoing concerns even for breweries like mine that have technically survived the worst of it. I’ve chosen, this week specifically, to treat the improved national number as evidence the broader structural conditions might finally be shifting, even while I keep a genuinely close eye on my own considerably harder local reality.
What I’m Actually Doing Differently At My Own Taproom This Month
Doubling down on genuinely local sourcing and community events rather than chasing wider distribution deals that feel considerably riskier given what’s just happened to two much bigger Scottish names than mine. If the barbell really is forming the way that lawyer described, I’d rather plant myself firmly on the small, local end of it than get caught in whatever squeeze took down operators with vastly more resources than I’ve ever had.
Where I’ve Actually Landed Reading This Week’s Numbers
Genuinely relieved for the industry nationally, genuinely worried for my own region specifically, and increasingly convinced that the real story of this recovery isn’t one clean, improving headline number but dozens of genuinely different local stories, some finally stabilising, some, like mine, still watching two of the names that built this whole scene struggle right next door.
What I Actually Told My Staff When The Figures Came Through
The honest version, mostly, that the national picture is genuinely improving but our own region is still living through something considerably rougher, and that I’d rather they understood the real, uneven shape of this recovery than walk around believing a single reassuring headline meant our own specific pressures had lifted. A couple of them had already seen the Scotland-specific numbers themselves and were relieved, in a strange way, that I wasn’t pretending otherwise.
What I Think This Uneven Recovery Actually Says About How We Talk About Industries In Crisis
National statistics are genuinely useful, and I don’t want to undersell how meaningful it is that the overall closure rate has fallen this dramatically after such a brutal previous year. But I’ve started to believe that headline recovery numbers can do a specific kind of quiet harm too, letting the wider public, and honestly sometimes even people within the industry itself, assume the crisis has meaningfully passed everywhere at once, when the actual, lived experience on the ground remains this genuinely uneven depending entirely on which specific corner of the map you happen to be standing in.