Another craft brewery is up for sale as a turnkey operation. Wisconsin’s Milwaukee Brewing Company is being offered for sale by asset disposition firm New Mill Capital.
According to the listing, Milwaukee Brewing Company’s production facility, MKE 9th St., offers 75,000 barrels of annual capacity, with a license to produce up to 200,000 barrels. Included in the sale is Milwaukee Brewing’s intellectual property and equipment, including a 60-barrel automated Sprinkman 4-vessel brewhouse, “like new” KHS canning, bottling and keg filling lines, and pasteurizer, among other brewing support equipment.
MKE 9th St. opened in September 2018 in downtown Milwaukee next to Fiserv Forum, the home arena of the NBA’s Milwaukee Bucks and Marquette University, which just hosted the first round of the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament.
Also being offered either with the production facility or separately is the “highly successful” MKE Ale House, a 15-barrel riverfront microbrewery, according to New Mill Capital.
Both properties are leased.
Among New Mill Capital’s selling points for Milwaukee Brewing is an “advantageous local business climate” and a central location with a metro population of more than 1.5 million, and 40 million within 300 miles of the location.
The listing refers to Milwaukee Brewing as the “nicest major microbrewery available in the country” for production of “traditional and specialty ales, hard cider, hard seltzer, RTD cocktails.” The brochure also notes that Milwaukee Brewing has contract brewing agreements for other companies and distribution “in place.”
Milwaukee Brewing was founded in 1997 by Jim McCabe. The brewery produced 4,940 barrels of beer in 2020, the latest year for which production data was available from the Brewers Association. Production for the company’s ale house was not broken out separately.
“We put our heart and soul into this brewery, building it into the operation it is today,” shareholder Jim Hughes said in a statement. “We believe in the brewery and people who have been critical to our success but have made the decision to search for a strategic buyer to satisfy internal needs and secure the future of Milwaukee Brewing for decades to come.”
In addition to Milwaukee Brewing, the former Green Flash Brewing Company facility in San Diego remains on the market as a turnkey operation.
Heritage Global Partners, a global asset advisory and auction services firm, is handling the sale of the equipment for WC IPA LLC, the investor group that purchased the Green Flash and Alpine brands in a foreclosure sale in 2018.
Heritage president Nick Dove told Brewbound that his firm has “received strong interest and several offers” for the brewery and “should be on a path forward soon.”