T in the Dark

Fresh from the furore over the loss of Diageo jobs in Kilmarnock and Port Dundas, the latest blow to the drinks industry in Scotland is that Tennent's lager is looking likely to be dropped from the portfolio of AB Inbev as the global drinks giant seeks to make savings.

The impact looks set to hit Glasgow North East the hardest as the brewery is based in Springburn.

Personally, if the worst does happen, I just hope there isn't a repeat of the outcry that we saw over Diageo. Yes, the politicians should do all they can to safeguard jobs and yes it would be a sad sight if Tennents had its glasses drained but business is full of ups and downs, though if you can't control your own destiny you're probably more likely to have more of the downs than ups.

I don't know who packaged up Johnnie Walker and Tennent's and sold them on to foreign owners but at that point Scottish control over the brands and jobs is lost. We've all seen Dragon's Den, we know how the game works. Let's just say Irn-Bru won't leave us in this predicament any time soon.

It seems there are still many who want to have their beer and drink it with these stories. We want to reap the rewards of a global player taking charge of our best brands and selling them around the world but then throw our hands up in the air in disgust when our brands are dropped because they don't fit into a business plan somewhere in Amsterdam or Belgium.

Given how cheaply we sell off our own big drinking companies I think we have to rethink our strategy on this one. Looking back, was the handing over of Scottish & Newcastle to Carlsberg really our smartest move? Though to be fair, the game was up when S&N became a publicly listed company back in 1995 allowing the investment banks to trade one of our biggest companies like a commodity in a board game.

I know we can't go down the isolationist path too much but I just wonder if we're trying to play Wall St and Canary Wharf at their own game and getting thoroughly shafted at every turn. Scottish Power, Scottish & Newcastle, Johnnie Walker, HBOS all haemhorraging capital and jobs out the door because we're simply not sharp enough at the Capitalist street fight.

When did we decide dealing in stocks and shares was for us Scots anyway? I wonder how likely it is that a Scandinavian country or Ireland would allow its nation's most popular drink stagger into ruin while looking helplessly on. From what I understand, they have much stronger safeguards from preventing that from happening. Or perhaps I'm just wrong and the Swedes and Norwegians are just more likely to take to the streets if they ever thought about moving Absolut or Tuborg into Continental Europe.

Thankfully, with Scottish ingenuinty, creativity and entrepreneurial spirit ensuring that new brands will always come through the market we don't need to hold on quite as tightly to our beloved brands as we otherwise might. Innes & Gunn, Prostrakan, Cairn Energy, Rockstar North and Scottish & Southern Energy to name but several Scottish success stories have just as much potential as companies and brands that we may never see back again.

So as sad as it would be to see Tennents go, we have plenty of household names in reserve to fall back on though we should think more carefully about how we use them to our advantage in the future.