“We are deeply disappointed that MillerCoors, the U.S. subsidiary of multinational brewing conglomerate Molson Coors, has willfully breached our 19-year agreement in an effort to stomp out the competition. Even though MillerCoors’ market power is much larger than Pabst’s, we will not allow this industry bully to push us around. We are confident that the court will see MillerCoors’ fabricated ‘capacity’ concerns for what they are: a thinly veiled, bad faith attempt to unlawfully hurt a competitor,” Pabst says.
MillerCoors recently shuttered its Eden, N.C., brewery, then said it didn’t have the capacity to bottle Pabst’s products. When Pabst offered to buy or lease the Eden facility, MillerCoors responded sale or lease of the Eden facility to Pabst was not a solution under the agreement because it would not involve MillerCoors continuing to brew Pabst’s beer, “the company’s original response to the lawsuit reads. It adds “Pabst’s proposals relating to the Eden facility were commercially unreasonable at best.”
Pabst reportedly required 4 to 4.5 million barrels brewed each year, and says that MillerCoors is its only option.