America's oldest brewery might soon be the largest American-owned brewer.Riding a 20-year wave of growth, D.G. Yuengling & Son Inc. is closing in on sales of 2 million barrels a year, bringing the 180-year-old company within a pint or two of surpassing the Boston Beer Co. and its Samuel Adams brands in sales.
A big reason is that foreign-based companies have acquired such beer behemoths as Anheuser-Busch and MillerCoors. Another is the coal-region beer's rapid growth.
Business is BrewingYuengling also has a ways to go when it comes to overall market share, holding less than 1 percent of the U.S. beer market. Yet the company is a giant compared with microbrewers such as Harrisburg's Troegs Brewing Co., which sells about 19,000 barrels annually.
Privately held Yuengling, which employs 225, does not release income or earning reports.Still, Yuengling's sales growth is remarkable considering its beer is available in just a dozen states, mostly along the East Coast. And its sales, stale for decades, began bubbling up from less than 100,000 barrels a year as recently as 1985, when Dick Yuengling Jr. bought the company from his father.
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