Carling Brewery

The origin of Carling dates back to 1818, when Thomas Carling, a farmer from the English county of Yorkshire, and his family settled in Upper Canada, at what is now the city of London, Ontario. He brewed an ale which became popular, and eventually took up brewing full-time. The first Carling brewery had two kettles, a horse to turn the grinding mill and six men to work on the mash tubs, and Carling sold his beer from a wheelbarrow on the streets of London, Ontario. In 1840, Carling began a small brewing operation in London, selling beer to soldiers at the local camp. In 1878, his sons, John and William, built a five-storey brewery in London, which was destroyed by fire within four years of opening, on 13 February 1879. William Carling, the firm's senior partner and technical leader, died of pneumonia contracted after helping to fight the fire. Carling merged with the Brewing Corporation of Ontario (BCO) in 1930. BCO launched Carling in the US in 1932 through a joint venture and acquired Toronto's O'Keefe Brewery in 1934. BCO became Canadian Breweries (CBL) in 1937. Under the leadership of president E. P. Taylor, CBL grew Carling into a Canadian national brand through the purchase of numerous other breweries across Canada, several of which were converted to brew Carling and O'Keefe brands and Carling Red Cap became the most popular brand of beer in Ontario in the 1960s. (Alcohol sale is regulated differently by each Canadian province, not on a nation-wide basis.) The brand later disappeared from the market and was unsuccessfully revived in 1994. Carling brands entered the UK market in a joint venture between CBL and British brewers in 1952. The joint venture eventually became Bass Charington, the largest brewer in the UK. After CBL was sold to Rothmans in 1969, it was renamed Carling O'Keefe in 1973. In 1989, Carling O'Keefe merged with Molson, which merged in 2005 with Coors to form the Molson Coors Brewing Company. Molson Coors has continued to brew and sell Carling Black Label across Canada. in Burton upon Trent, where Carling is brewed in the United Kingdom Carling became the UK's most popular beer brand (by volume sold) in the early 1980s. UK sales in 1999 were one billion pints, in 2007, 2.3 billion pints (over six billion worldwide), in 2009, 4.1 billion pints (11.6 billion pints worldwide), in 2010, 17.6 billion pints worldwide, in 2011 24.9 billion pints worldwide. In 2016 they broke new records, selling 7.9 billion pints in the UK alone, with 83.6 billion pints worldwide. In 2017, UK HMRC took Carling to the tax tribunal because it claimed the firm underpaid tax by more than £50 million between 1 September 2012 and 31 January 2015. But the firm won the case after it successfully argued the actual strength of the lager meant it should not be subject to the four per cent level of taxation. The lager is advertised as having an alcohol by volume (ABV) of four per cent but is actually brewed between 3.7 per cent and 4.3 per cent, owners Molson Coors said. In the tribunal hearing brought by HMRC, the firm said the ABV was reduced in order to cut tax on Carling products as stronger beers are subject to higher taxes than lower-strength ones under UK excise duties. EU law permits beer to have a natural variation of 0.5 per cent and the owner insists it does not believe customers are being misled. According to papers from the tribunal, Philip Rutherford, vice president of Molson Coors Europe, told the tribunal the "key driver" behind the decision not to change the labelling on Carling's products was to prevent retailers, including pub chains and supermarkets, from demanding "a slice" of the savings. ==Sponsorships==