Brewery boss to be sentenced for plans to defraud Bulmers

A brewery boss who planned to contaminate leading cider brands including Strongbow and Woodpecker will be sentenced at Bristol Crown Court on May 1.

Michael Hancocks, a director and major shareholder at the Aston Manor Brewery, Birmingham, pleaded guilty to a charge of attempting to defraud the UK's biggest cider producer, HP Bulmer.

The court heard that Hancocks, working with two accomplices, planned to contaminate cider produced at Bulmers Hereford manufacturing site with a yeast culture which would have caused sickness and diarrhoea in anyone drinking it.

The accomplices, chemist and former Aston Manor employee Richard Gay, who developed the culture, and Paul Harris, who tried to recruit a Bulmers employee to add it to the cider, also pleaded guilty to charges relating to the plot. The plan was uncovered when Russell Jordan, a Bulmers forklift truck driver who was promised £16,000 for contaminating the products, told his employers and the police. A police surveillance operation monitored Jordan's subsequent meetings with Harris, during which three lots of the yeast contaminant were delivered.

Defending Hancocks, Anthony Barker QC said he was a respectable and honourable man. Mr Barker said: "he was a man who was fighting his corner in a way that he felt - wrongly - was the only thing left to him."

However, Victor Temple QC, prosecuting, told the court Hancocks wanted to cause Bulmers economic and commercial disadvantage. The Crown rejected Hancocks' suggestion that he had only intended to cause a nuisance, saying the intention had been to force a commercially damaging product recall.

The court was told that Harris blamed Bulmers for business problems at Aston Manor and wanted "to teach them a lesson." Sales of the brewery's cider suffered when Bulmers reduced the alcohol content of some of its brands in order to pay less duty, and so reduce prices.

The two companies also competed for a contract to supply own brand cider to Booker Cash & Carry, with Bulmers winning the most profitable part of the business.

Bulmer' brands include Strongbow, the leading on-trade cider brand, as well as Woodpecker and Scrumpy Jack.