“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.”
Wouldn’t that mean that getting things onto the island is also expensive?
Also notice that this article only mentions the giant multi-national brewers Labatt and Molson. Small craft brewers will be fine, they’re already more expensive (and better) than the mass-produced stuff.
This certainly sucks for the 110 or so workers that work for Labatt and Molson. I guess it’s possible that the interprovincial trade rules could be modified so that only small companies are allowed free trade, preventing Molson and Labatt from pulling out, but still allowing people to buy craft beers from across the country. Not sure how easy it would be to define “small” though.
Yes, getting things onto the island will be expensive, but if you have a war chest, a distribution network, and the facilities to produce at scale, you can enter the market just fine. And if a bunch of others do as well, the lot of them can squeeze out the local brewers.
Weirdly enough, the amount of money you have today directly impacts how much you can fuck over someone smaller than you tomorrow.
This article doesn’t talk about small brewers though. It’s talking about the two largest beer companies in Canada. Yes, interprovincial trade will kill Labatt and Molson production in Newfoundland, as they move production inland to gain benefits from economies of scale. But small brewers will be fine. They might even see a growth as they gain access to bigger markets.
It’s just two different markets. Craft/local beer is one market, and really doesn’t compete at all with the likes of Molson and Labatt.