Eight Degrees Brewing owed €2.8m before resale to its founders

Eight Degrees Brewing owed its former Pernod Ricard-owned parent company Irish Distillers over €2.8 million ahead of its resale back to its founders.

In reports via the Irish Independent, the Cork-based craft brewery’s 2023 accounts have revealed that the business recorded a loss of nearly €867,600 in the year to June 30, 2023, which contributed to a reserved loss of over €968,300.

The results highlighted the size of the brewery’s debt to Pernod Ricard’s Irish Distillers which reportedly stood at €2.5 million at the beginning of the financial year and amassed to over €2.88 million by the end of the fiscal year.

In December 2023, the craft brewery’s original founders Scott Baigent and Cameron Wallace reacquired the business from Irish Distillers for an undisclosed sum in a move that saw the business which had started in 2010 only being under Pernod Ricard’s Irish Distillers umbrella for five years since its May 2018 acquisition. A buyout which, at the time, had been heralded a “multi-million euro deal”.

Speaking about the recent accounts, Baigent told reporters that the debts predate the duo’s current involvement in the business and that any fiscal queries about the state of the business should be addressed to Irish Distillers. In response to questions over the debt, however, Irish Distillers said it sold the business in December 2023 and, therefore, had no comment.

Baigent said he had been re-engaging with customers since the acquisition and revealed that the Eight Degrees brand will continue to live on and admitted the brewery now has plans to release new beers throughout the year.

In January, Baigent and Wallace told db that they will approach the new challenge with “a heap of reckless optimism and a lot of newfound energy.”

Eight Degrees beers are available in Tesco and Dunnes stores, and include Howling Gale Irish Pale Ale and Bohemian Pilsner Lager, as well as a Full Irish Single Malt IPA.