THE Government U-turn allowing pubs to sell takeaway pints during lockdown has been welcomed – but Bradford district breweries further down the supply chain are still struggling.

Darren Marks, owner of the Bingley Brewery, said: “There seem to be fewer pubs selling the takeaway beer this time around. Maybe it’s because it’s a four-week lockdown and the pubs and bars are concentrating on the products in the cellars.

“I was hoping to get requests for beers but it’s just not happened. Maybe things will change in early December.

“At the moment, money is going out but not coming in. We’re not part of the hospitality industry per se as breweries are classed as manufacturing, but the pandemic has had a devastating impact on business.”

Tim Dewey, chief executive at Timothy Taylor’s in Keighley, said: “For us as a brewery 90 per cent of our revenue is the cask ale we sell, so we really want the pubs to be open as soon as possible.”

For us it’s been a real nightmare - this stopping and starting. It’s far more complicated when you’re in the supply chain. Cask ale only has a shelf life of eight to 10 weeks.

“That first lockdown came on a Friday - and it was like a guillotine."

Mr Dewey said: “It cost us £500,000 in beer that could not be drunk. This includes the beer we had to destroy on site (brewery and warehouse) as well as the credits we gave to customers for beer that they could not sell before it went out of date, which also had to be destroyed.”

Luke Raven, director of Ilkley Brewery, said: “We’ve never had to close but we lost 70 per cent of our trade overnight, so it’s been a big impact from day one of the first lockdown.”

He also spoke about the difficulty breweries have with constant changes to lockdown rules.

"We can’t just stop and change. We have to plan ahead.”

“In that first lockdown, we had 50,000 pints of beer that needed to be poured out because we couldn’t sell them.

"We also worried about going back into Tier 3 when the national lockdown are eased because Tier 3 is a bad place to be and could make it unviable for pubs to be opened.

Robbie Moore, MP for Keighley and Ilkley, said: “I was really pleased to hear the Government had responded to my call to allow takeaway drinks as this will have a positive impact on jobs and industry in Keighley and Ilkley.

“We have two iconic breweries here, Timothy Taylor’s and The Ilkley Brewery, both of which employ local people. Locking down for a second time was inevitably a challenging decision but I am glad the government listened on this issue.”