Grimsby craft brewery Docks Beers has signed a pub distribution partnership with leading independent wholesaler and fellow town business Dee Bee.
The Ramsden Group firm trades strongly in the drinks sphere as one of the leading family-owned cash and carry and delivered suppliers.
Due to start imminently, it will allow the four-year-old business to expand its craft beer footprint across a wider area.
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Dee Bee will not only be selling casks and kegs to the pub trade, but also delivering them through their own extensive logistics network.
“After growing our own delivery network over the last two years it is an exciting gear change to partner up with such a well respected wholesaler,” said Shaz Shadan, one of the founding directors at Docks Beers.
“We are really impressed with Dee Bee’s rapid growth in the pub, bar and hotel sectors and the partnership should allow us to expand into areas that we could not easily service ourselves, invest back into the brewery for expansion and redirect all of the time and energy we were spending on self-distributing in these areas.
“We have been selling Cleethorpes Pale Ale through Dee Bee’s wholesale cash and carry business for three years, but in the background we have been working together to build this more integrated partnership. It has always been our aim to be the dominant craft beer brewer on the bars of Lincolnshire and this deal fast tracks that objective.”
Dee Bee covers much of the North and Midlands, serving up supplies in Newcastle, Merseyside and Northamptonshire with a Yorkshire and Lincolnshire heartland.
Nick Ramsden, managing director of Dee Bee Wholesale, said: “Dee Bee is excited to announce our partnership with Docks Beers, bringing their high quality, locally made, accessible craft beers to our pub and hotel customers in every corner of our region.
“We can expect the Docks Beers reach to grow quickly. It’s fantastic to partner with a fellow Grimsby-owned company. The Dee Bee depot is only a stone’s throw from the King Edward street brewery. The timing couldn’t be better - in the last 12 months we have rapidly grown our on trade business in Lincolnshire and Yorkshire.
“Docks are brewing the best craft beer for miles around and so we see this as a fantastic addition to our product range.
“There has already been a lot of interest from publicans and we have not even fully launched yet. This is just phase one of the partnership - it is our joint aim to add the full Docks Beers can range to our wholesale retail offering before the end of the year.”
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