Wrexham Lager
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Wrexham Lager was a brewery in Wrexham, Wales, UK that produced alcoholic drink for more than 120 years. It closed in 2000 and was mostly demolished between 2002 and 2003. Only the historic building in which brewing started still remains.
The brewery was opened in 1882 by German immigrants trying to recreate their local lager. The specific site was chosen because it was on a hill and the brewers could dig cellars into it for insulation.
However, the brewers could not easily keep the temperature down and the brewery went into voluntary liquidation. In 1886, Robert Graesser bought a majority shareholding in the brewery and introduced mechanical refrigeration to keep the cellars at -1°C. Sales did not improve as the people of Wrexham were used to drinking ale as the staple drink.
The brewery found a non-local market in export sales, including shipping companies, with documentary evidence of the lager appearing in Khartoum as early as 1898.
Sales remained low in the local area until the brewery bought the Cross Foxes public house in Abbott Street in Wrexham in 1922. Such tied houses boosted trade for most breweries, but sales expansion relied on local hostelries becoming available for takeover. When a rival local brewery shut down, Wrexham Lager was able to buy the freeholds of their tied houses, expanding a total of 23 pubs.
Because of World War II, the export market was lost and was difficult to reclaim after the hostilities ceased. Wrexham Lager's debt increased and the company was bought out by Ind Coope of Burton upon Trent.
Lager grew in popularity after the War and domestic sales began to rise. In the early 1960s, Ind Coope invested £2.5million in a modernisation programme. Wrexham Lager and Ind Cooper later joined with Ansells and Tetley Walker to become Allied Breweries, which became the largest brewing group in Britain of the time.
In 1992, Allied merged with the Danish Carlsberg group and the resulting company became Carlsberg-Tetley. They ran the Wrexham Lager brewery until it closed. Attempts were made to buy the brewery as a going concern before it was demolished but failed.
Martyn Jones, a nearby Member of Parliament, bought the original name and building for £1 in 2001. Local activists hope that brewing may continue from this building, at least on a small scale. The building itself is listed.
A small retail park, "Central Retail Park", has now been built on the site of the former unlisted buildings.
