RCH Brewery Has Closed

Bristol & District CAMRA were shocked and saddened to recently learn that RCH brewery has apparently had to close as the brewery was unable to obtain an Alcohol Wholesaler Registration Number due to a historical disagreement with HMRC. David Turner, managing director of RCH issued the following statement dated April 22 2017:

“RCH brewery has been placed in to an extremely difficult situation. Due to historical trading and administration issues, HMRC have taken the decision to refuse our application for Alcohol Wholesaler Registration meaning that whilst we can legally brew beer, we are unable to sell it. In the same week and for some of the same reasons HMRC revoked our export licenses too, thus removing our ability to undertake the export work we had been undertaking. This means that the two main areas of our business are unable to continue.

“As I write this, we’re not currently in administration or liquidation. We had an eleventh hour option present itself of maybe being able to sell the business but with further developments in the last 24 hours this won’t be possible and we expect to be appointing an insolvency practitioner to handle the liquidation by the end of the week.

Thankfully, some of the team have already managed to secure jobs elsewhere so we’re currently operating on a skeleton staff but as there’s no brewing activity or deliveries there isn’t really anything happening anyway, the remaining team will unfortunately be made redundant upon liquidation.

“It’s an awfully sad and crazy situation we’ve been placed in to and it’s truly heartbreaking that so much history, passion and excellent beers are having to disappear.”