BrewDog has left £20m in unpaid bills to hundreds of UK businesses after its collapse last month.
The Scottish beer giant owes almost 500 firms, ranging from football clubs, universities, coffee shops, bakeries and laundry services, to lawyers, councils and holiday parks, according to a report by administrators Alixpartners.
The once high-flying craft beer firm owed creditors £553.8million at the point of its sale in March to US drinks firm Tilray in a £33m deal, who say they have a ‘clear path’ to rebuild into a $1bn-plus brand.
Most of the debts that BrewDog owe are to firms in the UK, with many near the firm’s base in the north-east of Scotland, while others are abroad.
Aberdeenshire coffee roaster Coffee Apothecary is owed £8,000, Edinburgh caterer A Crolla & Son is owed £7,000 and Edinburgh laundry firm Suds R Us has a £900 bill, the BBC reports.
Marylebone Cricket Club, which owns Lord’s Cricket Ground, is owed £420,000, while West Ham United football club has a £7,000 unpaid bill.
UK holiday resort firm Centre Parcs is owed £7,000, and the University of Manchester is owed £14,000.
Aberdeen City Council has an unpaid bill of £11,400, North Lanarkshire Council £87,000, while Aberdeenshire Council, the location of BrewDog’s Ellon headquarters, is owed £238,000.
Dozens of businesses in the local area, including local printer Langstane Press, transport provider RS Taxis and the Ythan Bakery in Ellon, have also been affected.
Drinks companies, Heineken, Coors, Tennent Caledonian, alongside some smaller independent breweries, are also owed money.
Ardagh Metal Packaging is owed the most money with a £3m unpaid bill, followed by ARR Craib Transport, who are owed £1.6m and then Ball Beverage Packaging at £1.2m.
Event and marketing firms Rock Soup Media, Design My Night, GigPig are also owed money.
Alixpartners also confirmed that investors in BrewDog’s much-hyped ‘Equity for Punks’ crowdfunding scheme are not expected to receive any return.
The crowdfunding scheme launched in 2009 saw around 200,000 people put in money for a stake in the company, discounts and perks.
Even major lenders have not escaped the fallout, with secured creditors such as HSBC facing an estimated £85million shortfall.
The bank is expected to be repaid much of this debt as the senior secured creditor, but Alixpartners warned it could face a ‘material shortfall’.
US private‑equity group TSG Consumer Partners, a major BrewDog investor, is owed £27.6m, but it is not expected to retrieve its money.
While other unsecured creditors will only see returns of less than 1p in the pound on nearly £190m of debt.
It is expected that HM Revenue & Customs will be paid back in full for more than £4m owed.
The Scottish brewery, which was speculatively valued at £2billion just a few years ago, was sold to US cannabis and drinks firm Tilray for a fraction of that last month.
A total of 38 UK bars were closed, when CEO James Taylor told 484 staff in an all-hands conference call that they were no longer employed.
Mr Watt – who stepped back from the role of CEO in 2024 amid allegations of a toxic culture within BrewDog – said he would have ‘loved to save every single job and every single equity punk investment’ but ‘couldn’t’, adding: ‘That will stay with me.’
Tilray said it had ‘moved with speed’ in the six weeks following its acquisition of BrewDog from administration to position the brand ‘for its next phase of growth’.
CEO Irwin Simon told the Grocer the business was now ‘executing against a focused plan to expand BrewDog across the UK, Australia, and the United States, while further developing the brand in key growth markets, including the Middle East and India’.
‘Our priorities are clear: strengthen BrewDog, accelerate innovation, and scale our global beverage platform,’ Mr Simon said.
‘We are already taking decisive steps to reinvest in the BrewDog brand, innovation pipeline, and brewpub experience, and we see a clear path to rebuilding BrewDog toward its prior valuation of over $1bn.’
