Tilray Brands Add Montauk Brewing Company To Its Growing Beverage Roster

The announcement today that Tilray Brands, the largest cannabis company in the world by total assets, has purchased Montauk Brewing further expands the company’s already impressive beverage portfolio. Tilray has added another crucial regional player that positions the brand for continued success in the alcohol market by bringing the largest craft brewer in Metro New York under its umbrella. Plus, should cannabis receive federal legalization in the future, Tilray will have the infrastructure in place to quickly penetrate the market.

Over the last few years, Tilray has built an impressive portfolio of brands. The star is Atlanta’s Sweetwater Brewing, the tenth largest craft brewer in the United States known for its bold IPAs, acquired in 2020 for $300 million. They then purchased a sizeable Colorado-based production facility to support the westward expansion of Sweetwater in 2021. The next step was scooping the Breckenridge Distillery in Colorado and two more craft brewers in San Diego, California. Green Flash Brewing was once a behemoth brand that fell on hard times but has been rapidly regaining distribution points across the western U.S. since Tilray acquired it. Alpine Brewing is also spreading its footprint under its watch.

By folding Montauk Brewing into the mix, Tilray has added a brand that has grown into one of the largest craft brewers in the United States since its 2012 launch. It recently landed on the Brewers Association’s top fifty by volume list in 2020 at position 49. The brand slipped a bit in 2021, declining -4% to 46,935 barrels from its high of 49,127 in 2020. The financial terms for Tilray’s purchase were not announced.

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Montauk Brewing is known for its ales and seltzers, with over 6,400 distribution points. They are sold in numerous top national retailers, including Target
TGT
, Whole Foods, Trader Joe’s, Walmart
WMT
, 7-Eleven, Costco, BJ’s, and Speedway.

Irwin D. Simon, Chairman and CEO, said, “Tilray Brands continues to strengthen our U.S. footprint and operations through investments in and growing our portfolio of leading lifestyle CPG brands that resonate powerfully with consumers. Montauk Brewing is an iconic brand with leading market share and distribution in the northeast. Tilray Brands intends to leverage SweetWater’s existing nationwide infrastructure and Montauk Brewing’s northeast influence to significantly expand our distribution network and drive profitable growth in our beverage-alcohol segment. This distribution network is part of Tilray’s strategy to leverage our growing portfolio of U.S. CPG brands and ultimately to launch THC-based product adjacencies upon federal legalization in the U.S.”

The expansion of Tilray’s footprint follows the plans that Simon first announced when he stepped into the CEO role after his cannabis company Aphria merged with Tilray in late 2020. Recognizing that the legalization of cannabis in the United States was still a ways off, he looked for constant revenue streams that would flow to his company’s bottom line. The beverage sector, especially the alcohol component, fits that bill and would allow the company to build a distribution footprint and have the ability to experiment with cannabis beverages in its Canadian market.

To further their alcohol business, the company announced the appointment of Ty H. Gilmore as the president of U.S. Beer Business, a newly created position. A three-decade veteran of the alcohol industry, he spent the majority of his time at Diageo before running distribution for Glazer’s Beer and Beverage across the southern U.S.