BEAMISH & Crawford is to invest up to £2 million over the next year to expand brewing capacity at the Cork brewery.

The expenditure is purely on capital items and it does not include a projected growth in the company's marketing activities, according to Beamish & Crawford's managing director, Mr Alf Smiddy. The extra capacity is needed to cope with the expansion of Beamish sales "in the UK market and beyond", he added.

Mr Smiddy said that a major six month review of the business, recently completed by Beamish & Crawford's new owners, Scottish & Newcastle, had been "very positive" about the future of the Cork brewery.