“Opening up interprovincial trade of alcohol would have a very detrimental effect on the breweries that are here in Newfoundland and Labrador,” Mr. Farrell said in an interview Friday. “There’s no upside. You’d flood the market with trucked-in beer.”
Better title: “Molson-Coors is worried customers will stop drinking mass produced pisswater if they have more options available from the rest of the country.”
A brewery making quality products would welcome gaining access to a larger market.
It looks more like “Molson-Coors could easily terminate the local factory because the bigger Molson-Coors factories in Quebec and Ontario could pick up the demand with lower production costs”.
I don’t know if the economics of shipping the beer inland is cheaper than maintaining a local factory, but if that really is the case then Newfoundland might wanna keep some of its protectionist guards up or be smart about the barriers. Like allowing beer in from small producers only, not the likes of Molson.
The giant breweries everywhere make low flavour beer as their aim is to make a product that won’t offend anyone. That sort of beer is also cheap so it’s more popular than more complex beers for both reasons (inoffensive and cheap)
I expect Newfoundland also Labrador, serving the beer drinkers in half a million people population, is higher quality than Molson-Coors, but even if they increased production it would be hard to keep the quality or meet the price of their competitor
Though in Australia we have regional beer and the giant east coast beers haven’t squashed the smaller breweries in South Australia or Tasmania – and South Australia and Tasmania produce better beers than Queensland, New South Wales, and Victoria