CAMRA calls time on beer festival

Thursday 27 July 2017

The campaign group that helps organise Jersey’s annual beer festival says it won’t be holding the event this year.

CAMRA – the Campaign For Real Ale – has staged a festival almost every year since 2002 – but says increasing costs make the event uneconomical.

Organisers say whilst CAMERA is a not-for-profit organization, and they don’t want to make money, they can’t afford to make a loss.

Vice Chairman, Jon Le Sueur, says: “For the last couple of years, amongst rising costs and competition from other events, it has become clear that the current model is unsustainable and as such, we are unable to take the risk of staging the event this year.

“The cost of storing the equipment that we need to hold an annual event, coupled with the continuing rises in both Jersey and UK excise duties, freight and the cost of hiring in other essential equipment means that we now need to sell nearly three times as many pints of beer and cider as we have available to sell!”

But, it might not be “last orders”. The group says it would like to bring back the event in a different guise but needs help.

Mr Le Sueur says: “We hope to be able to bring the event back, with a fresh approach and a more manageable cost base but in order to do so, we do need more help.  CAMRA has for many years depended upon its membership and friends for volunteer assistance.  None of us make any money from putting on the festival, but we give our time freely in order to bring this together.  We hope to engage with more of our members over the next few months and hopefully some more active volunteers will be forthcoming.

“In the interim, we will look to return to our roots as a Campaigning organisation, and we will look to make ourselves (and our mini-beer tent) available for events organised by others – all invitations welcome!”