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Brewers have the worst balance sheets in Britain
Across 807,357 sets of company accounts, no industry files more deficits than the people who make beer.
Of the 308 brewing companies that filed accounts in the last 60 publishing days, 118 reported liabilities larger than assets. That is 38.3 per cent, the highest rate of any industry filing in volume, and more than double the 17.4 per cent average across every company on the register.
Key points
- Brewing leads every industry at 38.3 per cent of accounts in deficit.
- Distilling and blending of spirits is second at 35.5 per cent.
- Licensed restaurants (31.7%) and pubs (30.1%) follow close behind.
- The all-industry average across 795,732 filings is 17.4 per cent.
What the filings show
Companies House publishes every set of accounts filed with it. Over 60 publishing days we have read 807,357 of them, and sorted the results by the industry each company declared. The pattern at the top is unmistakable: making and selling drink is where the balance sheets are weakest.
The drinks trade, end to end
| Industry | Accounts filed | In deficit |
|---|---|---|
| Manufacture of beer | 308 | 38.3% |
| Distilling, rectifying and blending of spirits | 346 | 35.5% |
| Unlicensed restaurants and cafes | 5,231 | 31.7% |
| Public houses and bars | 4,012 | 30.1% |
| Take-away food shops and mobile food stands | 8,109 | 26.8% |
| Hotels and similar accommodation | 2,745 | 23.8% |
| Fitness facilities | 2,079 | 26.5% |
Why this is not the same as failure
A deficit here means one thing: the accounts reported liabilities larger than assets at the balance sheet date. Small breweries are capital hungry and frequently funded by director loans or parent companies, both of which sit on the balance sheet as liabilities and can put an otherwise healthy business into negative net assets for years.
What makes the figure worth reporting is not any single company but the spread. Across 308 brewing filings and 346 distilling filings, a third or more land in the same place, and they do so consistently rather than in one bad month.
For contrast
The industries filing the cleanest balance sheets are the ones with almost no trading at all. Residents property management runs at 4.6 per cent and dormant companies at 4.8 per cent, against 38.3 per cent for brewing.
What happens next
The series continues each working day. Brewing files in small numbers, so its rate moves more than a large industry would; we will report if it settles, worsens or proves to be a quirk of who happened to file this quarter.
How this was produced. Companies House publishes every set of accounts filed with it as open data. Cap News downloads that file each working day, reads the tagged figures out of each filing and joins them to the company register. Nothing here is hand picked. The method sets out what is counted and what is not.