Are you having a party soon and will you have specialty beer enthusiasts? Then pay close attention. The Tilburg brewery Kraftbier is bankrupt and therefore the complete stock has ended up on an online auction. And that means that you can stock up on entire pallets of beer, such as Groote Kwèèk and Witte Gij’t, for a bargain price.
The lots on the auction vary from huge amounts of beer to small gift boxes. For example, people can bid on pallets with seven different boxes of beer of 24 cans. But there are also packs of four specialty beers with a glass under the hammer. Crate racks, billboards and a drinks fridge can also be found there. Even the company car is auctioned.
“People could make a profit here.”
All that beer probably goes over the counter like hot cakes. The minimum bid for a pallet with seven boxes of beer is 50 euros. While you pay more than 300 euros for it in the store.
“My job is to sell everything for the highest possible yield,” says auction curator Roger Baltes. “That’s number one. But sometimes items still sell for the starting price. So people could make a profit here and get higher discounts than in the store.”
Kraftier went bankrupt in mid-May. According to former owner Rob van den Meijdenberg, the growing popularity of specialty beer was the death knell for the Tilburg brewery.
“That way it delivers as much as possible for the creditors.”
“When we started in 2015 there were 350 breweries, now there are more than 1000,” he says. Together with the corona crisis, more expensive raw materials, inflation and the introduction of deposits on cans, we sold too little.
No one was willing to take over the company. The trustee therefore decided to auction the entire stock. “That way it yields as much as possible and they may be able to repay creditors,” says Van den Meijdenberg.
The auction closes on July 19. A week later, the winners can pick up their beer.