After helping orchestrate one of the biggest transactions in the craft beer space in 2019 — Kirin-owned Lion Little World Beverages’ acquisition of New Belgium Brewing — Simon Thorpe is on to his next project.
What that next project is still TBD.
What is clear is that Thorpe’s work as managing director of Lion’s nascent U.S. craft business unit is now complete 18 months after he joined the company. (Credit to Beer Marketer’s Insights for first reporting the story.)
Thorpe’s contract with Lion expired at the end of July, and he leaves having helped provide Lion with a foundational piece in New Belgium — the fourth largest U.S. craft brewing company in 2019, with production volume of 886,500 barrels of beer, a 4% increase compared to 2018, according to the Brewers Association.
“The strategic framework and the roadmap of what they need to do over the next two to three years is now pretty well established,” Thorpe told Brewbound.
Lion’s overarching goal remains unchanged despite the COVID-19 pandemic, which is to build a portfolio of craft breweries from across the country to scale its U.S. platform to around 3 million barrels over the next three years.
“There is a very clear intent to establish a scale business in the U.S.,” Thorpe said. “New Belgium is the first step in that, and let’s call it the backbone of the platform. And I think, having established the roadmap for them, there will be a number of other things that are acquired over the course of the next 12 to 24 months, and Lion’s commitment to that is undiminished.”
The addition of New Belgium also provides Lion with strategic brewing capacity on both coasts, with production facilities in Fort Collins, Colorado, and Asheville, North Carolina. Even with that capacity, Lion will be working to build up its capacity to hit the 3 million barrel threshold, while also acquiring smaller breweries to “lever up and expand.”
“The aim is to get to this size, and to do that, you need to acquire scale, but you also need to acquire some things that are high growth, high margin,” Thorpe said.
Beyond scale or growth potential, Lion is looking to create a collective of like-minded founders who share a core set of values, Thorpe said.
“It’s about reinvigorating the idea that craft brewing can do more for society and there is a better way of operating a business than just being a business,” he said. “It’s Kim Jordan’s idea of a business with a purpose and that’s very much ingrained in Lion’s philosophy and why Lion was being very careful about selecting the right type of breweries that would enable that business with a purpose, philosophy.”
That philosophy will become more crystalized in the coming months and years.
Although the COVID-19 pandemic has challenged the craft brewing industry, Thorpe dispelled the notion that it has depressed valuations.
“Good quality breweries are still commanding good valuations,” he said. “There’s nothing changed there. For sure, there is some caution and uncertainty for everyone.”
With Thorpe’s work complete, he now hands off the projects to Matt Tapper, the managing director of Lion Global Markets, and a New Belgium management team that includes CEO Steve Fechheimer. Tapper and a team of others are relocating from Australia to the U.S. to run the craft operations stateside.
Still, COVID-19 has led many companies to reassess their strategic plans and threshold for risk, Thorpe said. As such, some brewery owners who planned to maintain their independence are exploring partnerships, while others are looking to diversify and others are continuing the path of independence, Thorpe said.
“You wouldn’t be human if you didn’t look at the uncertainty around 2020-2021 and reexamine the way that you were working for the long term,” he said. “In some cases that has caused people to change their pathway a little bit, but in others, it’s remained the same.”
Fechheimer praised Thorpe’s work and called him “instrumental in NBB choosing to join Lion.”
“I’m sure the next chapter for him will include other exciting opportunities,” he said.
Over the next month, Thorpe said he’ll determine what’s next for him, and there should be ample opportunities.
Thorpe has carved out a career as an architect of acquisitions while leading Duvel Moortgat USA and later Pabst.
In his seven years as president of Duvel Moortgat USA, Thorpe orchestrated the acquisitions of Kansas City’s Boulevard Brewing in 2013 and California’s Firestone Walker Brewing in 2015. He went on to serve as CEO of Pabst, where he established partnerships with Michigan’s New Holland and Kentucky’s Against the Grain, although those deals did not include stakes in the businesses.
“There’s no shortage of good opportunities out there,” Thorpe said. “It’s just a question of taking a little bit of time to clear my head a little bit and make some right decisions for the family for the future.
“Beer remains a really interesting place to spend your life’s work,” he added.