United States beverage and medical cannabis company Tilray Brands has purchased BrewDog’s UK brewing operations in Aberdeenshire and Lanarkshire, along with its brand portfolio and 11 of the company’s pubs across the UK and Ireland.
However, the joint administrators overseeing BrewDog’s assets, AlixPartners, have confirmed that BrewDog’s 38 other UK bars are not part of the £33million Tilray deal and have now been closed, with the loss of 484 jobs.
AlixPartners also confirmed that the sale deal offers no return to any of BrewDog’s equity holders, including those who joined its ‘Equity for Punks’ scheme.
Partner and managing director at AlixPartners, Clare Kennedy, said: “As one would expect over the past two weeks, we have received significant interest in the BrewDog business from prospective buyers across both the trade and investment communities.
“In Tilray, we have secured a purchaser with a passion for craft brewing who will be an excellent custodian and sponsor of the business in the months and years ahead.
“Having done so, our priority now is to support, to the fullest extent possible, those people whose roles have been made redundant, and we would ask operators within the UK leisure sector who are in a position to assist to contact us at any time.”
Having reported a pre-tax loss of £37m in 2024 – failing to make a profit for the fifth year in a row – BrewDog has spent recent years scaling back its operations in an effort to find a profitable core.
Last July, it closed 10 UK bars, including its old Aberdeen flagship, then in October there were more job cuts, and at the start of this year, it announced the cessation of spirits production in Ellon.
In February, AlixPartners was brought in to review a restructuring plan and look for potential buyers for the business – a process that culminated this week in the deal with Tilray Brands.
The administrators stressed that at no point in that sale process was there an offer made, either from Tilray or from any other prospective buyer, which could have preserved the craft beer empire in its entirety.
Of the BrewDog pubs closing with immediate effect, 29 are in England.
In Scotland, nine venues are now closed. In the brand’s Aberdeen homeland, BrewDog’s Castlegate and Union Square pubs are shut, as its Inverurie outpost – but the Ellon DogTap has passed to Tilray.
In Edinburgh, BrewDog Cowgate has closed, but Tilray has taken on DogHouse Edinburgh, and the Lothian Road outpost.
In Glasgow, both branches – in the Merchant City and at Kelvingrove, are now closed, as are the company’s regional venues in Perth, St Andrews and Stirling.
However, the 18 franchise bars run under the BrewDog name, both in the UK and internationally, currently continue to operate.
Hospitality workers’ union, Unite, pledged to secure ‘legal and financial justice’ for its affected members, saying that BrewDog workers had been ‘treated as disposable pawns’.
The union’s national lead for hospitality, Bryan Simpson, said that the conduct of the company’s senior management had been ‘nothing short of a national disgrace.
“For the CEO to tell workers that they were redundant with immediate effect, on a conference call with only 25 minutes notice, has echoes of P&O and is deplorable,” said Simpson.
Company co-founder James Watt stepped down as BrewDog CEO in March of 2024, while reportedly retaining his share in the company and continuing to play a leadership guidance role as ‘captain’.
His longtime business partner Martin Dickie left the company in August 2025, citing ‘personal reasons’.
