CAMRA Calls for CMA Probe Into UK Beer Market — But the Story Is More Nuanced Than “Craft Beer Is Dying”
Two stories landed within days of each other this week that deserve to be read together, not in isolation. On 6 July, CAMRA published a report calling for a Competition and Markets Authority investigation into the UK beer market. By 9 July, Northern Monk’s CEO Damian Guha was telling The Morning Advertiser that craft beer is “evolving, not dying” — and that the headline decline figures don’t tell the full story.
Read separately, they’re contradictory. Read together, they’re two sides of the same structural shift.
The CAMRA case
CAMRA’s report, Beer in the UK, makes a blunt case: the market is dominated by a small number of global brewers, and the consequences are worse choice and worse quality for drinkers. The headline figure is striking — seven of the top 10 selling “craft beers” in the UK are made by just four global brewing companies. The term “craft” has been co-opted to such an extent that it barely describes anything meaningful anymore.
The report cites SIBA data showing that demand for independent beer is 280% higher than its share of the pub market. In other words, drinkers want independent beer far more than pubs are actually serving it. The gap isn’t a problem of supply — it’s a problem of access.
Report editor Tim Webb called the situation a “national embarrassment.” CAMRA chair Ash Corbett-Collins said drinkers are being “short changed” on choice and quality. The group is asking the CMA to examine whether current market structures are actively limiting competition.
The Northern Monk counter-narrative
Enter Northern Monk, one of the UK’s more successful independent craft breweries (headquartered in Leeds). CEO Damian Guha’s message to The Morning Advertiser was direct: “If you look at the category numbers showing decline, it’s not quite the full picture. Most of that decline is coming from a couple of the really big players.”
Here’s where it gets interesting. Guha’s point isn’t that craft beer is booming. It’s that the market is becoming polarised — some large craft brands are losing ground while quality-focused independents continue to grow. The brands doing well are the ones “focusing relentlessly on experience, not cutting costs or reducing quality.”
Northern Monk pointed to its own flagship pale ale, Faith, as proof that a single well-made beer with broad appeal can sustain a brand. Co-founder Russell Bisset told The MA: “We feel it’s got really broad appeal and ticks a lot of the boxes consumers are looking for.”
The data underneath both stories
The SIBA 2026 Independent Beer Report gives us the ground truth beneath both narratives:
- Around 100 independent breweries closed in 2025. Down from 1,715 at the start of 2025 to 1,578 by January 2026.
- Production grew among the breweries that remained. The survivors are getting bigger, not smaller.
- The British Beer & Pub Association reports approximately two pubs closing per day in the first quarter of 2026.
- World lager accounts for 30.3% of volume sales and 34.9% of value sales in GB pubs (The MA Beer Report 2026). Lager is still king.
This is not a story of craft beer collapsing. It’s a story of consolidation. The very small brewers — the ones running from a garden shed with £2,000 of kit — are struggling. The mid-sized independents with distribution muscle, brand identity, and quality control are holding their ground. The macro-brewers with “craft” labels are still outselling everyone else on volume because they control the supply chains into pub groups.
What this means for the average drinker
If you go into a pub group venue (Greene King, Wetherspoon, Punch), you’re going to see the same handful of beers regardless of which branch you visit. That’s the CAMRA problem — centralised procurement means the same eight “craft” options appear in 400 pubs, while the genuinely independent brewery three towns over can’t get its beer onto your bar at all.
If you go into an independent pub with a landlord who curates their own range, you’ll see a very different picture. The demand signal from drinkers is real — the 280% gap between desire and availability is evidence of it — but the plumbing of the UK beer supply chain hasn’t caught up.
The verdict
Neither CAMRA nor Northern Monk is wrong. They’re just looking at different layers of the same problem. CAMRA is right about market structure — the pub trade is too tightly controlled by too few buyers, and the “craft” label is meaningless when AB InBev, Heineken, Carlsberg, and Molson Coors each own multiple “independent-looking” brands. Northern Monk is right about product — the best independent beers are genuinely better than the macro-craft alternatives, and drinkers can tell the difference.
The question for 2026 is whether the CMA will actually take CAMRA’s invitation seriously, or whether another year of consolidation passes quietly while the brewery count ticks down by another hundred.
Sources: CAMRA Beer in the UK report via Beer Today | Northern Monk interview, The Morning Advertiser | SIBA Independent Beer Report 2026 | The MA Beer Report 2026 | BBC — Two pubs close per day in 2026
