My response to Kronenbourg

Another picture of the back of the brewery


I sent the following reply to Kronenbourg (and I CC'd several of the executives in Beamish) :

Thanks for your reply and don't worry about spelling my name incorrectly, it is not an uncommon occurrence.

I am interested to hear that Beamish told you that "they will take action to remedy the situation" - this is a big step forward.

I was invited to a meeting in Beamish on Friday 13th of Augustwhere I met with 3 executives from Beamish Eamonn O'Sullivan, customer services director; Stephen Murphy financial director and Jim D'Arcy production director. In the meeting what they told me was that they were aware of the state of their buildings but that they didn't have the money to repair the buildings.

They actually told you that they had plans for the buildings' restoration submitted to the local planning authorities awaiting approval? That is great if it is true. I must contact the local authorities and verify this.

Who in Beamish told you this? I only ask because as I mentioned, in the meeting I attended, Stephen Murphy the financial director was very clear that Beamish couldn't afford to repair their buildings.

I would hate to think you were being mis-informed by some well intentioned Beamish employee who is not "in the loop"

Thanks again for your reply,

Regards,

Tom

Beamish responds to Kronenbourg

I received a reply from Kronenbourg to my question about the implications for the Kronenbourg brand of being associated with a brewery in the dilapidated state the Beamish and Crawford brewery is (see below). It seems Beamish have promised them they are to remedy the situation, as soon as they receive planning from the local authorities.

That's strange - in my meeting with Beamish, there was no mention of any plans submitted to any local authorities. On the contrary, what they told me was that they were aware of the problem but that they had other projects of higher priority and that there was nothing I could do to move this up their priority list. In other words it might be done if we win the lotto, several times over, and become the largest brewery in the country, and the government decides to rescind the taxes on beer but not before!

Dear Mr Raftery,

Please accept my sincere apologies for spelling your name incorrectly.

In response to your question, we have discussed the matter with Beamish & Crawford and we are satisfied that they will take action to remedy the situation as part of proposed developments at the Cork brewery, which are awaiting planning consent from the local authorities.

Yours sincerely

Kronenbourg

Response from Kronenbourg

Beamish and Crawford does brewing/bottling/distributing for several international brands (Fosters, Kronenbourg, Miller, Carling, and Scrumpy Jack).

I sent a query to several of these companies asking if they were happy to have their brands associated with such a delapidated brewery - this morning I received the following reply from Kronenbourg (Kronenbourg@scbrandsltd.co.uk). Note the mis-spelling of my surname and the lack of an answer to the central question:


Dear Mr Rafferty,

Thank you for your e-mail.

While Kronenbourg 1664 is distributed in Ireland by Beamish & Crawford, I
must advise you that the brand is neither brewed nor bottled at the brewery
in Cork .

Yours sincerely

Kronenbourg

Beamish's owners view site

I was checking the log files of the site this morning and I discovered that the site was browsed by a computer with the ip address 81.144.203.147 - this ip address resolves to Scottish Courage - one of the brands of Scottish & Newcastle.

The site was viewed twice yesterday from this ip address - once at 10:26 am and again at 11:59 am.

It will be interesting to see if there is any feedback from this - it was probably prompted by my "Corporate Responsibility" email.

"Beamish and Crawford" in search engines

I checked various search engines this morning using the search term Beamish and Crawford - this site comes up:
3rd in Google
4th in Altavista
4th in Yahoo
4th in Dogpile
and 6th in MSN Search

If you want to help improve this, please link to this site using the terms Beamish and/or Beamish and Crawford as your link terms. The higher up the site is, the more people find the site and the more likely Beamish are to do something about the appalling state of their Head Office. See below for an example:

Beamish's lack of Corporate Responsibility

I found an interesting report on the website of Scottish & Newcastle (the owners of Beamish and Crawford plc) - it is called Full Principles and Values Report where it says Scottish & Newcastle "are also fully aware of our responsibilities to the environment and the community".

I sent them an email to corporate.responsibility@scottish-newcastle.co.uk asking them how they square this report with the pictures of the Beamish Head Office on this site.

I await their reply with interest!

Meeting with Beamish

Just a reminder of how bad the Beamish buildings look:


Quick update on this project - I had a meeting with Beamish on last Friday 13th and they told me "There is nothing you can do that will make us change this"!

To put this comment in context, I was invited to a meeting in Beamish where I met with 3 executives from Beamish Eamonn O'Sullivan, customer services director; Stephen Murphy financial director and Jim D'Arcy production director. They told me that the discussions were to be considered confidential as there was information they were giving me which could be considered commercially sensitive so I won't go into any of the specifics mentioned.

Basically what they said was they are aware of the state of the building but that they are under commercial pressures and that the commercial pressures force them to prioritise other projects before the restoration of their buildings or put another way Beamish knows about the state of the buildings but doesn't feel strongly enough about it to spend the necessary money on restoration.

Then they asked me, in light of this new information, would I take the site down?!!!

Of course, I said no - my logic was that if I left the site up that might put pressure on them and force the restoration up their list of priorities - taking the site down would do nothing for the buildings.

This is when they told me that there was nothing I could do which would make any difference to their priorities. Then they said they were very disappointed with my decision to leave the site up, thank you and goodbye. It was hilarious, having said I was going to leave the site up and giving my reasons, I was more or less thrown out - very politely, Stephen showed me to the door and said "Eamonn says goodbye"!

I can understand that they have competitive pressures - what business doesn't - but they seriously expected that having told me that, that I would immediately take the site down, thereby taking away any reason for them to do anything about it.

By the way, the site is currently 21st in Google's found set in searches for the term Beamish, 7th in searches on search.msn.com and 6th in Yahoo! - thanks to everyone who has linked to the site so far. If anyone else could link to the site using the word Beamish as the link I would be delighted - do it in a blog or a site link - either works.

Response from Beamish

I received an email from Eamonn O' Sullivan - the customer Services Director of Beamish today in response to this site and my email to Beamish about it. Eamonn is offering me a tour of the plant - I will be taking up this offer some time after the 12th of August and will post my impressions to this site

Here's Eamonn's email:

Dear Mr. Raftery,

Further to your note to our Managing Director, Mr. Alf Smiddy, regarding
the buildings on our site at South Main Street.

I am the person responsible for a number of upgrade projects at the Brewery
for 2004/2005, and while acknowledging your comments, I do believe that,
rather than exchanging emails or correspondence via websites, it would be
helpful if you took the time to come and see us here at the Brewery and
perhaps we could update you on our various upgrade plans for the site in
2004/2005.

I would be obliged if you could please contact me as soon as possible on my
mobile (08x xxxxxxx), I don't have a telephone number for you, so we may
agree a time and date. I am out of the country until next Monday, but
will be glad to take your call at any time.

Yours sincerely,



Eamonn O'Sullivan



Eamonn O' Sullivan,
Customer Services Director,

What about the competition?

The other main brewery in Cork is Heineken - this is their how their building looks. Obvious care has gone into the quality cut stone buildings. Unlike Beamish, they obviously take pride in their appearance and how they present Cork to the world.

The Beamish front wings

The picture above is a close-up of the right-hand wing at the front of the Beamish building. As you can see, it hasn't been painted/plastered in decades - unbelieveable neglect - and there is vegetation growing out of it!



The picture above is a close-up of the left wing at the front of the Beamish building - check out the cracks When was this wing last painted/plastered?

The front of the building

The front of the Beamish building doesn't look too bad as long as you only look at the centre portion of the building! This is the part of the building the Beamish are happy to promote - you won't see them showing pictures like the ones on this site (with the possible exception of a cropped version of the photo above).

Cork - European City of Culture 2005

Cork is going to be the European City of Culture in 2005 - the Cork2005 website even has a section devoted to Visual Arts and Architecture - I'm guessing that this is one architectural vision that won't be on their trail.

Welcome

Welcome to this site. This is a site dedicated to showing you the contempt in which the company Beamish & Crawford holds the City of Cork.

The image above is a picture of Beamish & Crawford's Head Office on South Main Street Cork (Tel: +353 21 4911100, Fax: +353 21 4911111, Email: alf.smiddy@beamish.ie) taken from Crosses Green Quay.

As is obvious from the picture, the building has fallen into a state of extremely unsightly disrepair. The building hasn't been painted or renovated in any way in decades. Just to clarify - this is the current Head Office of Beamish & Crawford plc.

This is where Beamish and other assorted beers are brewed - I'm not making any imputation about the quality of beverages brewed in a building in such bad condition - merely pointing out that if the shabby state of the corporate head office is anything to go by, Beamish would not appear to be a byword for excellence.

Check back regularly for more damning pictures - or use the xml link (on the right) to subscribe your rss reader to this site.