Beer-making behemoth Anheuser-Busch is selling a 74-year-old brewery — a local landmark that sits across from Newark Liberty International Airport — and closing two other facilities in California and New Hampshire.
The company, with U.S. headquarters in St. Louis, said it will be selling its brewery at 200 Route 1 in in Newark, New Jersey, to Goodman Group next year. That firm, headquartered in Minneapolis, acquired a former New York Daily News printing plant in Jersey City, New Jersey, for $92 million and intends to redevelop the property as a logistics center. It has similar plans for the Newark brewery site, according to Anheuser-Busch.
The brown building, known for its animated neon flying-eagle sign, has sentimental value for some area residents.
“When you were flying into Newark at night, it was like a beacon welcoming you home!” a post on Facebook said.
Anheuser-Busch — part of the world’s largest beer brewer, Anheuser-Busch InBev — also said that early next year it plans to shut its breweries at 3101 Busch Drive in Fairfield, California, and 221 Daniel Webster Highway in Merrimack, New Hampshire. The three planned closings follow “a thorough review,” Anheuser-Busch said in an email to CoStar News on Friday.
The beer industry has seen a bit of a rough patch. Overall U.S. beer production and imports were down 1% in 2024, according to the Brewers Association. And in the third quarter, AB inBev saw its profits drop to $1.05 billion from $2.07 billion for the same period last year. Anheuser-Busch’s Bud Light also lost sales from a boycott sparked by a social media post by a transgender influencer.
Budweiser, Bud Light, Busch and Busch Light were among the beers made at the Newark brewery.
Production from the three closing breweries will be shifted to other U.S. facilities, and “these changes will enable us to invest even more in our remaining operations and in our portfolio of growing, industry-leading brands,” according to Anheuser-Busch.
Newark, the Garden State’s largest city, was once a beer-brewing center for the United States, with several dozen breweries, including P. Ballantine and G. Krueger Brewing, operating there. But that chapter will be be closing with the Anheuser-Busch brewery, which opened in 1951.
The 1.1-million-square-foot former Ballantine brewery at 424 E. Ferry St., within the city’s Ironbound section, sold for $61 million in 2019. It was transformed into a distribution hub and then sold to Hines for $127.5 million in December 2022.
Goodman Group plans to repurpose the Newark brewery site for industrial manufacturing and logistics uses, according to Anheuser-Busch. Goodman Group didn’t respond to an email from CoStar News seeking comment.
“Over the last five years we have taken steps to update and modernize our U.S. manufacturing operations, investing nearly $2 billion in our 100 facilities across the country,” Anheuser-Busch said in its statement about the closings.
The Newark brewery, a prominent fixture to those traveling to and from the Newark airport, is 3.2 million square feet on an 87-acre site, according to CoStar data.
The closing California brewery is 870,000 square feet on 50 acres, according to CoStar, which lists the New Hampshire brewery as 500,000 square feet on 196 acres.
The roughly 475 full-time employees at the three closing breweries will be offered jobs in other Anheuser-Busch facilities with relocation stipends and new skills training. Those who don’t accept the offer to transfer will be given severance packages.