Robert Cain Brewery plans £50m brewery village: Liverpool’s Robert Cain Brewery, which is facing a strike off notice at Companies House, has unveiled plans to develop a £50m tourism, leisure and retail destination on its current seven-acre site. The owners want to develop the brewery into a national visitor destination and increase the amount of traditional Cains ales brewed at the site. The scheme, called Brewery Village, involves the restoration of the grade 2-listed building to house a traditional Cains craft brewery and tour with a sky bar in the roof offering views over the city and the River Mersey. The building would also house a 100-room boutique hotel, digital work studios and a large open plan delicatessen-style food market and restaurant for independent artisan producers to make and sell their produce on site. The plans include a spa, gym and function rooms. The existing Brewery Tap pub would be restored and retained. The Brewery Village scheme would transform one of the city’s most important sites and create a new tourist destination capable of holding food, craft and cultural events which would complement the city’s existing retail and leisure offer. A market appraisal of the site predicts it would attract about 500,000 visitors a year once complete. Cains plans to submit a planning application and application for listed building consent by the end of July. If consent is granted, work on the site would start next spring. Under the proposals, Cains’ volume lager production of other brands under license for supermarkets would cease. Sudarghara Dusanj, managing director of Cains, said: “We want to create a major new tourism and leisure asset for the city which would secure the future of the Cains beer brand for decades to come. Cities like Manchester and Newcastle have been unable to save their traditional breweries but we know this scheme will ensure Liverpool has a thriving and traditional brewery for future generations. We anticipate increasing production of traditional ales by as much as 300% as a result of the scheme. We will create a vibrant, independent and varied destination for people to live, work and enjoy which complements the rest of the city’s assets and dramatically improves the appearance of one of the city’s most important arterial routes. Our proposals would also make a significant contribution to the city’s ambitions to regenerate the entire Baltic Triangle.” Liverpool Mayor Joe Anderson said: “Proposals such as these are complex but are an indication of confidence in the city and its prospects. There is much work to be done to bring the scheme to fruition but we are fully behind the plans and extremely excited about the positive impact it will have on a key city site. We understand the challenges businesses such as Cains face and believe this scheme is the right way forward for both the Cains brand and the city as a whole.” Louise Ellman, Labour MP for Liverpool Riverside, said: “This is an exciting and creative scheme which will see the restoration of one of the city’s key heritage assets and the creation of a new visitor attraction for an important part of Liverpool. The proposals enable a proud brewing tradition in the city to become the focus of regeneration. I back these proposals.”

Sudarghara Dusanj tells Propel – we’ve taken inspiration from around the world: Cains managing director Sudaghara Dusanj told Propel that the loss of major contract last September made the business re-assess its future – and think about a way forward. He said: “We will be filing our accounts shortly but we lost a big contract last September and that was a wake-up call. A brewery like this needs full production at all times – and we feel the brewery useful working life has probably come to an end. We’ve taken inspiration from around the world for this development. We want to do something really unusual, creating a village within the city but Brewdog is a great example of the new world in brewing and the development of this scheme will give us confidence to develop a small brewery on site – we want to take the profitable part of the business and develop it. The scheme will be similar to the one that Everards is planning in Leicestershire.”