Beamish and Crawford

Beamish to take action?

There was a story in the Irish Examiner this morning (the paper edition - not the online one) which says that "Beamish and Crawford has announced a revamp for a dilapidated part of its historic corporate headquarters..."

The budget for the project is 50,000 Euro according to the article. This makes me extremely dubious about just how much Beamish are going to do. In my meeting with Beamish's representatives in August, they told me that it would cost over 70,000 Euro just to erect scaffolding on the site!

Still, scaffolding will be visible on the site from tomorrow apparantly so we'll see soon enough just how serious Beamish are.

Hopefully my scepticism is misplaced and we will see significant improvements on this site now.

Public representatives involvement

In order to continue the pressure on Beamish and Crawford I logged onto the websites of all the main Irish political parties and got the contact details of all our local representatives.

I sent them all a quick mail outlining the purpose of this site and asking for help to get Beamish clean up their site.

Most of the public reps didn't respond but of those who did I was delighted with most of their responses.

In particular, Simon Coveney's (FG) office gave me some very useful contacts to pursue; Dan Boyle (Green Party) promised to write to Beamish and the corporation; Senator John Minihan (PD) alerted me to the Derelict sites and Dangerous structures acts; Ciaran Lynch (Labour) was a great help getting the media involved in this project; and Fergal Dennehy (FF) helped with research into planning applications.

Damien Wallace (FF) and Batt O'Keeffe (FF) also contacted me to say they had written to 'the relevant department in City Hall' and Beamish respectively on this issue.

Maybe some of this exposure will help push the issue of the buildings up Beamish's priority list now!

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!