Comment: SIBA HAS excluded the big boys

The Society of Independent Brewers (SIBA) claims new terms governing membership of the organisation that designates bigger brewers as 'associate members' is not an act excluding the likes of Fuller's. So what on earth is it then?

In denying brewers who produce above a certain volume of beer the right to vote and influence its decision-making in the future, SIBA is shouting from pubs' rooftops that this is now the organisation representing relatively small scale brewing. No thank you, Mr Shepherd Neame, Mr Marston's, Mr Greene King.

There has been tumultuous debate within brewing in the run-up to establishing 200,000 hectolitres as the threshold beyond which SIBA would consider you too monstrous, too likely to have a pernicious influence, to be fully fledged members. Hopes had been high that SIBA could emerge from the in-fighting myriad of trade bodies currently representing the trade, sweep away the uncertainty about its constitution and become the definitive organisation representing British brewing.

That is no longer a possibility.

Yes, SIBA does plenty of good things trumpeting the cause of the British institution that is brewing. Yes, there is a very credible argument that there needed to be clarity on who exactly the organisation represents. And, yes, it is questionable how meaningful larger brewers' involvement with SIBA had been (when I spoke to Sheps boss Jonathan Neame a couple of days after the threshold announcement, the AGM's decision was news to him). But, no, you can not label this move anything other than an exclusion.

Marston's Beer Company chief Stephen Oliver gave a powerful hand grenade of a speech at SIBA's conference several years ago that warned of a scenario that resonates here and now. He said that many SIBA members were poor quality hobbyist brewers whose growth, funded by the government tax breaks of PBD, and trumpeted by SIBA, was deceptive. It was, he said, only cannibalising other cask ale sales while the overall market declined worryingly.

SIBA's new membership conditions give greater power to those types of members and overlooks the bigger picture for cask ale.