Crafting their own way to a great success

Although beer sales generally are falling, Carlow Brewing Company has found that demand for O’Hara’s craft beers and stouts are going up, both here in recession-beaten Ireland and abroad.

Now Ireland’s largest independent craft brewery, it sells to 20 countries worldwide, employs a staff of 15 and saw sales shoot up by an impressive 50% during 2012. Company managing director Seamus O’Hara says turnover has been rising steadily since the company expanded by building a new premises at Bagenalstown in 2009 which allowed it to quadruple production capacity.

A growing thirst for craft and speciality beer has been a global phenomenon for the last 20 years but according to Mr O’Hara Irish drinkers were slower to change their habits than elsewhere.