Watneys Headliners canned range

It is seeking £400k on Seedrs for 18.3% of its equity, valuing the company at around £1.8m

Historic beer Watneys could reappear on supermarket shelves after the relaunched brewer mounted a £400k fundraising campaign to boost its on and off-trade distribution.

Once the UK’s bestselling beer, Watneys was relaunched as a craft brewing business in 2014 and has now turned to crowdfunding platform Seedrs for cash to accelerate its growth.

Since its recent reinvention, the brewer has targeted growing on-trade distribution, but after opening an online shop in 2018 it is now planning a push into the off-trade.

It is seeking £400k on Seedrs for 18.3% of its equity, valuing the company at around £1.8m.

The crowdfunding campaign, launched on Monday, has already received funding of £315k with 58 days still to run.

Watneys plans to use the fund to grow its sales team to deepen its distribution in pubs as well as invest in formats and marketing to target off-trade distribution and grow its export capability to hit 10% of international sales within three years.

It is also planning to relaunch other heritage beer brands Federation and Matthew Brown.

“The nostalgia and history of Watneys give us provenance, but what we’ve done is taken this heritage and reinvented the brand to appeal to a whole new generation of drinkers,” said Nick Whitehurst, director of Watneys Beer Company.

“Now we’re modern, relevant and have a business model to make Watneys a key brand in the craft beer market.”

The brewer has grown its business (up 85% year on year in 2018) without owning its own brewery - instead partnering with fellow craft brewers and using wasted capacity in their breweries.

Watneys is already backed by a group of industry veterans and over 30 angel investors, including East Midlands Business Angels.