Pubs face keg deposit charges

Licensees could be charged a deposit of between £10 and £20 for each beer keg or cask delivered to their premises unless the trade finds ways of reducing an estimated one million containers lost to the industry each year.

Brewery bosses say the annual number of lost or stolen kegs has reached epidemic proportions and now outweighs the levels of new containers imported into the country.

Containers routinely go missing from pubs once they are empty because they have no asset value to a publican.​Chairman of the Returns Asset Management Committee, Graham Slight

Costs industry £22.5million​It is feared between 750,000 and one million casks and kegs will go missing this year, costing the industry a staggering £22.5m.

One industry leader predicts some brewers may run out of kegs and fail to meet sales orders this Christmas unless the problem is tackled as a matter of urgency.

The British Beer & Pub Association has now formed a specialist working party charged with the task of exploring solutions to the problem.

Chairman of the Returns Asset Management Committee, Graham Slight, admitted this week that a keg deposit system could be the only way to stem the severe losses.

"Some estimates point to around 14% of the industry's stock of seven million containers being lost each year, which could mean as many as one million disappearing.​

Scrap​"The problem has escalated as scrap keg value increases and worldwide demand for steel pushes up," he said.

Slight, who is distribution director for Coors UK, has called on brewers to work with licensees and other retailers to help ease a grave problem.

"Containers routinely go missing from pubs once they are empty because they have no asset value to a publican.​

"The brewers' own performance in uplifting kegs and casks has not always been as good as it could have been, but licensees are not helping by the haphazard way they store empty containers," he added.

Heavy demand by brewers means that new casks and kegs can take from six weeks to six months to be delivered by manufacturers in Spain, Germany, France and the Czech Republic, depending on numbers ordered.

Nightmare​Small brewers fear a keg deposit scheme would be a nightmare to operate and bring major cash flow and accounting problems for licensees and wholesalers.

Society of Independent Brewers' northern-region chairman David Grant warned it would hit licensees, small brewers and wholesalers hard.

"Major cash-flow problems and increased management costs would be involved in getting a scheme like this working properly,"​ he said.

Grant, managing director of Moorhouse's Brewery, said the company lost about 1,500 containers in three years.

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Your Comments​Kevin Roe​ via email 21/09/2006"Pubs face keg deposit charges' but does it work both ways? We are a Freehold, freehouse and have a good name for selling ales. As such I get approached all the time by brewers wanting to send beers in. Great, but can they be bothered to collect the empties? No! As CAMRA " Pub of the Season - Summer 2006 I had loads of people phoning wanting to send beers to us but what do I do with the empties? I've got no problem with a charge - make it £50 a time, I'd collect it any day!