Heineken to invest £39m in refurbishing and reopening closed pubs

Heineken UK is to invest £39m in reopening 62 pubs and refurbishing hundreds of its older venues in a bid to attract customers used to working from home.

The brewer, which has around 2,400 sites under its Star Pubs and Bars arm, said a quarter of its venues were in line for improvement this year.

Over 90 of these are set for makeovers costing on average £200,000.

The investment will see 62 sites reopen in 2024, meaning that by the end of the year Heinken will have reopened 156 long-term closed pubs since the end of 2023.

Heineken said this would create an estimate 1,075 new jobs and reduce its number of closed pubs to pre-pandemic levels.

The refurbishments will focus on introducing new designs, signage and dividing screens to create different areas of the pubs for varied uses such as watching sport and eating dinner.

Recent re-openings included the Ashford Arms (pictured) in Ashford-in-the-Water, Derbyshire, which relaunched after the pandemic as a country pub with a 107-cover restaurant, nine en-suite rooms and a 30-cover alfresco area, while the Ship in Barnsley has become a local pub specialising in sport and entertainment.

Heineken will launch further projects to improve pub insulation and cut energy use by 15% as part of its goal to be net-zero by 2040.

Lawson Mountstevens, managing director of Star Pubs, said: "People are looking for maximum value from visits to their local. They want great surroundings and food and drink as well as activities that give them an extra reason to go out, such as sports screenings and entertainment.

"Pubs have proved their enduring appeal; after all the disruption of recent years, Star is on track to have the lowest number of closed pubs since 2019.

"It’s a tribute to the drive and entrepreneurship of licensees and the importance of continued investment. We’ve spent more than £200m upgrading and maintaining our pubs over the last five years, and we’ll continue to invest to keep them open and thriving."

Heineken entered the UK pub market through its acquisition of Scottish & Newcastle’s UK operations in 2008, which were rebranded into Star Pubs & Bars.