Here’s more worrying bad news in the brewing world, this time from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Iron City Brewing, fresh out of Bankruptcy and still wearing it’s post-reorganization glow announced today that it will “temporarily” layoff 25-30 workers, which represents more than 25% of its work force on March 1, when the brewery closes down its canning line. That aging canning line will then be evaluated to see if it can fixed or must be replaced. In the meantime, they will contract the canned beer at another, as yet undetermined, brewery. This process, they believe, will take from one to three months.
The bottled beer will continue as before. Hopefully this will all work out as stated, but these things have a way of not quite working out as intended, so who knows? New Iron City President Tim Hickman is upbeat, but then he would be, wouldn’t he. “We’re still committed to these products. We’re still committed to Pittsburgh.”
On the plus side, since emerging successfully from a high-profile Chapter 11 Bankrupty, sales are up 20% and sales of one of their brands, Augustiner, have increased threefold. Fingers crossed, let’s hope it all goes according to plan and those layoffs will indeed be “temporary.”