CAMRA Wants a Competition Probe Into Big Beer: What the Numbers Actually Show

CAMRA Wants a Competition Probe Into Big Beer — Here's What the Numbers Actually Show

Campaigners want the UK's competition watchdog to open a full investigation into the beer market, arguing that a small number of multinational brewers now hold enough contractual power over pubs and bars to squeeze independent breweries off the bar altogether.

A new report from Camra, the Campaign for Real Ale, puts a number on the shift that many landlords and small brewers have felt for years: four global brewing groups now account for roughly 80% of the beer made in Britain, up from just 4% in 1990.

That is not a gradual drift. It is a near-total reversal of ownership in a single generation, and it is happening at the same time as an accelerating wave of closures among the independent breweries that CAMRA says are being locked out of the taps.

The Ask: A Full Market Investigation

CAMRA's report calls directly for the Competition and Markets Authority to investigate the structure of the UK beer market, specifically the supply agreements and contractual terms that determine which beers actually get poured. The argument is that these arrangements — not consumer taste — are what decides what ends up on the bar.

Ash Corbett-Collins, CAMRA's chairman, framed it as a straightforward consumer issue.

"Ordinary drinkers are being short changed when it comes to choice and quality. The Government needs to step up, start taking the issue seriously, and take action that matches up to their statements about supporting pubs and the communities they serve."

Corbett-Collins pointed to comments from Andy Burnham about the importance of a good night out, arguing that a market investigation is the concrete step needed to back that sentiment up:

"The best way he can deliver on that is by ordering a proper market investigation to sort this mess out and deliver a fair deal for publicans and drinkers, and the independent brewers that they want to support."

From 96% British-Owned to 80% Foreign-Owned in One Generation

The headline statistic in the report is an ownership reversal. In 1990, 96% of UK brewing capacity was British owned. By 2026, roughly 80% of the beer produced in the UK comes from foreign-owned firms, concentrated in four global brewing groups.

CAMRA's report does not name all four groups explicitly, but it does name two, and both have made the same move in the past two years: shutting a historic British brewery site and shifting production elsewhere in their network.

Two Breweries, Two Owners, Two Closures

Neither closure is presented by its owner as a reduction in beer quality — both companies describe these moves as consolidation, combining factory operations to cut costs. But CAMRA's point is that consolidation happens on the balance sheet, not on the bar. The brand survives; the local brewery, the local jobs, and the regional character of the beer do not.

The Independent Brewers Are Disappearing

While the big four have been merging production lines, the independent sector has been shrinking outright. Data cited in the report from the Society of Independent Brewers and Associates (SIBA) shows 137 independent breweries closed across the UK in 2025, leaving 1,578 still trading.

CAMRA's argument is that these two trends are connected. It is not simply that big brewers are more efficient or more popular.

It is that contractual arrangements with pubs and bars — supply deals, discount structures, and tie agreements — make it structurally difficult for a small independent brewery to get its beer onto a bar in the first place, regardless of how good the beer is. Lose the tap, lose the volume; lose the volume, and closure follows.

"Craft Beer" Is Increasingly a Label, Not a Guarantee

Perhaps the sharpest finding in the report concerns the language drinkers actually use to signal they want something different. CAMRA found that seven of the UK's ten best-selling "craft beers" are made by the same four global brewing conglomerates the report is concerned about.

Tim Webb, editor of the report, put the underlying complaint in sharper terms than a simple market-share statistic:

"The fact that a narrow clique of multinational corporations dominates the UK brewing industry is a national embarrassment. They only make beers that suit their production facilities, ignoring the types that beer lovers want to drink. They do not know how to reverse beer's downward spiral, make little profit, and brew nothing worth exporting. They cannot grow the UK economy."

Whether or not every reader agrees with that framing, the underlying data point is hard to dismiss: a category invented specifically to describe small-batch, characterful, independently-brewed beer is now, by sales volume, mostly made by the same four companies the category was originally defined against.

What This Means for Pubs and the Breweries Behind Them

For the landlords and brewery marketing teams this site is built for, the report is not simply a piece of trade politics — it describes the commercial environment pubs are actually operating in.

Every estate we have audited in our 80/20 digital health research is, in CAMRA's terms, part of the independent side of this story: family-run regional brewers like Adnams, Shepherd Neame, Hook Norton and Robinsons compete in the same national market as four multinationals that, per this report, now control four-fifths of production.

That context matters commercially, not just politically. A market this consolidated is also a market where genuine independence is a differentiator few competitors can credibly claim — and it is one that customers increasingly notice.

That is a marketing asset hiding in plain sight. A pub that can honestly say its cask ale comes from a family brewery down the road, rather than a global production line, has a story that a four-star Google rating cannot replicate — see our piece on why a pub's history is its best marketing asset for the same principle applied to heritage rather than provenance.

The tap list itself is content: who brewed it, where, and why it is on the bar at all, is exactly the kind of specific, human detail that turns a routine social post into one people actually stop scrolling for.

It also raises the stakes on something we have written about before: consistency and choice at the point of sale. If contractual tie arrangements are shaping which beers even reach the pump, then the beers a pub does have discretion over — guest ales, local ciders, one-off casks — become more valuable as a point of difference, not less.

See our estate digital health benchmarks for how the strongest-performing brewery estates in our dataset already lean on exactly this kind of local identity.

What Happens Next

CAMRA's ask is specific: a full CMA market investigation into UK beer supply, not simply a statement of concern. Whether the Competition and Markets Authority takes up that call is, for now, an open question — market investigations of this scope are rare, slow, and politically contingent, and CAMRA is one campaigning voice among many competing for the Government's attention on pub and hospitality policy.

What is not in question is the direction of travel in the data CAMRA has compiled: British ownership of UK brewing has fallen from 96% to 20% since 1990, independent brewery closures ran at 137 in 2025 alone, and seven of the ten best-selling "craft beers" in the country now come from the same four groups the campaign wants investigated.

Whatever the regulatory outcome, that is the market independent pubs and breweries are already operating inside — and one where telling a genuinely independent story, well and consistently, is only going to matter more.