Activities

Fuller, Smith and Turner is a London-based brewer and pub operator. It is still run by the descendants of the family who founded the business on the site of an historic brewery in Chiswick that dates back to the 17th century.

The group operates four divisions – managed pubs, tenanted pubs, a small hotel division called Fuller’s Hotels, and the brewery business.

Its retail estate includes the Fine Line female-friendly chain, Ale & Pie (City of London pubs with lunchtime trade), English Inns (large destination country pubs focused on food), gastropubs, suburban pubs and traditional locals (some with a Thai restaurant). 

Brewing brands include the flagship London Pride premium ale, ESB ale, Organic Honey Dew beer, Discovery Blonde beer, Chiswick bitter, and 1845.

Timeline

• 1829: John Fuller joins the brewery that has been operating in Chiswick, London, for more than 200 years.
• 1845: John Bird Fuller, Henry Smith and John Turner found the company and their descendants continue to run the firm today.
• 1829: The Griffin Brewery name is trademarked.
• 1894: Fuller’s opens its first hotel, the Drayton Court hotel. The group also opens its first off-licence and by the late 1990s is operating a chain of more than 60 shops.
• 1909: The group buys the Beehive Brewery in Brentford.
• 1929: Fuller’s becomes a private limited company.
• 1959: The group forms a subsidiary company, Griffin Catering Company.
• 1960: Fuller’s opens the Master Robert Motel.
• 1992: The first Ale & Pie pub opens in Fulham, London.
• 1996: Fuller’s floats on the London Stock Exchange.
• 1999: The group launches the Fine Line brand of female-friendly bars along with the Broadwalk line of bars.
• 2000: Fuller’s sells its Quality Wine Merchants for £7.5m to focus on its brewery, pubs and inns. It opens its first late-night bar, Katabatic, in London’s Shoreditch but sells the bar in the financial year to March 2002, along with its five poorly-performing Broadwalk venues.
• 2001: The group doubles its bedroom numbers to 500 with opening of its sixth hotel, the White Hart in Kingston upon Thames, in April. It opens the Brigstow hotel in Bristol in July in the wake of an £8m conversion from office blocks,  followed by the Chamberlain hotel in London in October.
• 2002: The English Inns Hotels business is renamed Fuller’s Hotels
• August 2005: The group buys London-based boutique gastropub group Jacob & Guiness from Ewan Guiness and Matt Jacob. The deal brings in four properties in Chiswick, Hammersmith, Battersea and Ladbroke Grove.
• November 2005: Fuller’s tables a recommended £92m offer for Hampshire-based George Gale and Company in its biggest acquisition to date. Gale’s, which was founded in 1847, has 111 pubs across the South and South-east of England that include 69 tenanted, 42 managed and 97 freehold properties. Its brewery produces the HSB, Gales and Butser ales.
• March 2006: Fullers closes the Gales brewery in Hampshire and transfers beer production to its Griffin brewery in London.
• October 2006: Fuller’s sells the 116-bedroom, contemporary-style Brigstow hotel in Bristol for £17.09m to Pedersen Hotels in order to focus on inns with rooms. The following month Accor signs a long-term lease on the hotel, which reopens as the UK’s second Mercure.
• October 2006: The group opens an 80-seat theatre on the second floor of the Old Stock Joint pub in Temple Row, Birmingham.
• December 2006: Fuller’s sells the 105-bedroom Master Brewer hotel in Hillingdo, West London, to Tesco for £18.5m. The group is left with 363 properties, including six hotels and 17 pubs with rooms.
• December 2006: The group buys five new pubs for £7.2m. The acquisition includes two properties from Gourmet Holdings - the Five Bells at Stanbridge in Befordshire and the Talkhouse in Stanton St Oxfordshire – for a combined £2.85m.

Financial snapshot

Full Year
Turnover: £178.2m (2006: £145.1m)
Pre-tax profit: £42.3m (2006: £15.3m)

Half Year
Turnover: £91.1m (2005: £67.4m)
Pre-tax profit: £10.9m (2005: £8.4m)

Financial year end: 31 March 2007
Half-year end: 30 September 2006

Operating data

Total number of pubs and hotels: more than 360 premises, including six hotels
Number of letting bedrooms: 196
Number of employees: more than 3,000

Fuller's Inns (201 tenancies, 156 managed pubs, six hotels)
Full-year turnover: £140.9m (2006: £111.9m)
Full-year pre-tax profit: £44.1m* (2006: £17.2m)

Half-year turnover: £72.3m (2005: £51.4m)
Half-year pre-tax profit: £13.8m (2005: £8.4m)

* The figure includes £20.5m from the sale of properties and £23.6m operating profit

Fuller's Beer Company
Full-year turnover: £58.4m (2006: £51.3m)
Full-year pre-tax profit: £7.9m (2006: £6.1m)

Half-year turnover: £29.1m (2005: £23.3m)
Half-year pre-tax profit: £4.2m (2005: £3.6m)

Strategy

"It has been an exceptional year, boosted by the addition of a full year’s contribution from the Gales business, the profits generated from the sale of two hotels, and strong underlying growth. This year also saw Fuller’s become London’s last remaining traditional brewer.
We will continue to grow our business organically.

Our Hotels business has a more concentrated focus and we will benefit from leveraging the expertise in this division to build accommodation sales in the managed estate. In addition, we have the opportunity of offering 10-year leases to a number of former Gales tenants to build on the business model we developed in the original Fuller’s estate."

Source: preliminary results statement, 8 June 2007

Key directors

Executive chairman: Michael Turner
Commercial director: Tim Turner
Financial director: Paul Clarke
Managing director, Fuller’s Inns: Simon Emeny
Managing director, Fuller’s Beer Company: John Roberts

Contact

Griffin Brewery
Chiswick Lane South
Chiswick
London
W4 2QB

Tel: 020 8996 2000
Fax: 020 8996 2079

E-mail: pr@fullers.co.uk
Website: http://www.fullers.co.uk