Farewell to two traditional brands

With Binding and Pfungstädter, the region loses two beer brands with a long tradition. That is painful – but the result of a long development that neither company could influence.

Pfungstadt and Frankfurt are only about 45 kilometers apart. So it’s no wonder that employees from the Pfungstädter brewery traveled to Frankfurt last Saturday to support their colleagues from Binding there, despite the freezing cold, at a church service and a demonstration in the fight to keep around 150 jobs. Conversely, the Frankfurt brewers provided assistance on Thursday in the southern Hessian city, where a total of around 1000 citizens, employees and their families took to the streets in the afternoon, almost 70 jobs are at stake there. In both cases, the emotions of those affected run high, and in both cases the helplessness of the shocked workforce is enormous. And yet the employees of the Hessian traditional brands seem to be losing the fight.

The prospects of at least maintaining the two locations are extremely poor. In the Sachsenhausen district of Frankfurt, where the Radeberger Group, which belongs to the Oetker Group, brews binding beer, the parent company wants to give up the production site. In Pfungstadt, the brewery has to bow to a contract signed by the previous owner in 2020, according to which a residential area will be built on the brewery site.