@ Barchid & Fairdealer.12 Feb 2020 11:41
I've spent some time looking into this, and I'm going to put my thoughts on this issue down. I've been quite busy speaking to this fella, and Ralph Findlay, and doing a bit of limited research where I can to try to verify what I could. This post is going to be quite long winded, but I'll go through what I've found and share my opinion at the end of it.
I'll start with Chris Wright.
When I phoned him on Monday, I explained that I am a shareholder of Marston's, and wanted to hear what he had to say.
He went on to talk about Mr Ed Anderson, and the issue of the sediment in the barrels. He created the impression that this was an on going issue with the brewery, and it was "not resolved or closed". He also suggested that the sentiment was an industry wide issue and different brewers had "subtle differences" in how they deal with this issue. I attempted to press him for who did what to address this issue, and how the differences were addressed. He did not appear to be able or willing to provide examples of who was doing what.
He was also heavy on the suggestion that "Hundreds" of tenants/ landlords were either in the process of or considering taking action to address this. Again, he either could/would not commit to weather this was specifically Marston's or if any of these publicans were connected to any other brewer.
After conducting a Google search to verify if there are any historic or active cases against breweries in this matter, I found none. I had also contacted the regulatory body on the Gov website to ask if any cases in relation to this were ongoing. As yet I have had no response.
Chris did only seem to want to discuss issues with Marston's. He did not seem to want to, or was unable or unwilling to go over any detail about any issues about any other brewery. In fairness, I did do a Google search to see if any other brewer had any such issues. Again, I found no results, which to me begs the question, why did he just not say so.
He also suggested that this issue could easily become the PPI scandal of the brewing industry. To be fair, I can see some degree of validity to this point. If this landlord decides to take things further, and take legal action against the company, then the "Sheep mentality" could easily kick in and others could easily jump on the bandwagon. Should that happen and it goes all the way it doesn't need much explanation of what this could cost the company. That said, I think it is extremely unlikely that as a company, we would simply sit on our hands and just chance our arm in court against multiple claims going against us. My guess is, that on a logical level Marston's would try to find a workable solution that works for all concerned which in turn would potentially save the company £Millions in costs, compensation etc.
That also said, I got the impression with Chris that he did have some kind of bee in his bonnet about Marston's, or that he has some kind of agenda. This is jus
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