Jarrow Brewery to bottle beers again after move to new 57,000 pint-a-week home

JARROW Brewery has announced plans for a new £500,000, 57,000 pint a week base in South Tyneside.

The South Shields-based firm, which last year pulled the plug on plans to move to St Andrew’s Church in Hebburn, hopes to create more than a dozen jobs through its new home in a former pet food warehouse on the Bede Industrial Estate in Jarrow.

“We’ve had a restricted range for the last few years because we’ve been brewing so much Rivet Catcher,” said Jess McConnell, who owns the business with wife Alison.

“But this new brewery will allow us to produce a really great selection of beer and send it all over the North East.

“It will also allow us to start bottling again. We’ve not bottled for two years because we’ve just not had the capacity.”

Founded in 2002 Jarrow Brewery has grown to employ 51 staff at The Maltings Ale House in South Shields – which includes its current 15,000 pint a week brewhouse – The Magnesia Bank in North Shields, The Robin Hood pub in Jarrow, and Sunderland and South Tyneside Camra’s Pub of the Year, The Isis in Sunderland.

But now the plan is to use The Maltings for smaller run brews, while moving production of Rivet Catcher, a 4% golden bitter, to the new site – which will create three jobs initially and 14 by 2015.

“Rivet Catcher will definitely be brewed at the new unit, while The Maltings will do the stout and the porter and the new ales,” said Mr McConnell.

Funding for the new venture, which has seen the brew plant constructed in Cheshire, has included a £140,000 grant from the Regional Growth Fund, on condition the firm invests more than £360,000 of their own cash.

Mr McConnell said he hopes the first beers will be ready from the new brewery in April.