BrewDog administration leaves creditors unpaid, report shows

The BrewDog administration has left creditors unlikely to be repaid, according to a progress report filed six months after three group companies stopped trading independently.

AlixPartners, appointed administrator to BrewDog Retail Limited, BrewDog PLC and BrewDog International Limited when the three companies entered administration in March 2026, issued the update this week. The report states unsecured creditors of BrewDog Retail are owed £207m and are not expected to recover any of it.

Former employees are among those affected. The filing lists £489,000 in unpaid wages and accrued holiday pay owed to staff, which AlixPartners says will not be paid. HM Revenue & Customs is separately owed £2.4m in VAT, PAYE and National Insurance contributions, also not expected to be recovered.

BrewDog's collapse leaves employees, tax authorities and small investors last in line for repayment.

BrewDog PLC, the group's parent company, carries a further £190m in unsecured creditor claims, the filing shows. BrewDog International Limited owes an additional £671,000 to unsecured creditors. Combined debts across the three entities stood at more than £500m at the time they entered administration.

Assets moved to Tilray months earlier

The administration followed a March 2026 deal in which Canadian cannabis and drinks company Tilray Brands acquired BrewDog's intellectual property, its breweries and 11 bars for £33m, according to the administrators' report. Tilray kept 736 staff on through the transaction; 38 BrewDog bars closed as part of it, and 440 employees were made redundant.

TSG Consumer Partners, the private equity firm that bought a 22% stake in BrewDog in 2017, is not expected to recover any of its investment, the report states; AlixPartners puts TSG's loss at £27.6m. Individual investors who bought shares through BrewDog's "Equity for Punks" crowdfunding rounds are also not expected to see any return.

A shortfall wider than first expected

AlixPartners attributes the shortfall to recovering less from BrewDog Retail's assets than initially projected, combined with the rising cost of running the administration itself, according to the filing.

The collapse adds to a run of hospitality insolvencies in Britain, where closures ran at roughly 20 a day this spring. Some chains have found buyers after entering administration, as Giggling Squid did when it bought Thai Express UK; that option did not materialise for BrewDog Retail.

James Watt and Martin Dickie founded BrewDog in Scotland in 2007. Its pub estate grew to around 100 sites worldwide at its peak, before the Tilray transaction and the closures that followed reduced it. AlixPartners' report on the BrewDog administration does not give a date for a final creditors' meeting.