Keeping tabs on your kegs
Lew Bryson asked for experiences with dealing with kegs and keg theft. This is something we have been grappling with lately. I have been visiting local scrapyards lately and finding that they seem to not know or care that beer kegs are stolen property. They just keep buying them, chopping them up and selling the metal. In some rare instances they will give you the 3 or 4 kegs they have, but that is the exception. Some have large quantities that must be repurchased if you want your cooperage back. There are few things more frustrating than having to buy your own stolen property back. But what do you do when a scrapyard has 50 of your kegs? They have paid money for them, so they won't just give them to you. The police won't get involved until a retailer has filed a report about kegs being stolen. And prosecution could involve identifying the keg IDs from the reporting retailer and matching them to the scrapyard kegs - a difficult proposition. And even if you did convince the yard to not buy the kegs, the sellers will just go to the next yard or the next town. We are currently formulating a plan for dealing with the scrapyards in our region, but this is something that the industry needs to come together on. As the price of stainless continues to rise, brewers will see an increase in their kegs disappearing and ending up as scrap. This is an issue I would like to see the BA address, as it affects us all. Has this been discussed within the BA? Can we somehow get some industry mobilization to put some legal pressure on scrapyards and take away the market for scrapping kegs? The railroad industry did it for rails - scrapyards won't touch 'em.
Neil Witte
Boulevard Brewing Company
nwitte@boulevard.com
Lew Bryson asked for experiences with dealing with kegs and keg theft. This is something we have been grappling with lately. I have been visiting local scrapyards lately and finding that they seem to not know or care that beer kegs are stolen property. They just keep buying them, chopping them up and selling the metal. In some rare instances they will give you the 3 or 4 kegs they have, but that is the exception. Some have large quantities that must be repurchased if you want your cooperage back. There are few things more frustrating than having to buy your own stolen property back. But what do you do when a scrapyard has 50 of your kegs? They have paid money for them, so they won't just give them to you. The police won't get involved until a retailer has filed a report about kegs being stolen. And prosecution could involve identifying the keg IDs from the reporting retailer and matching them to the scrapyard kegs - a difficult proposition. And even if you did convince the yard to not buy the kegs, the sellers will just go to the next yard or the next town. We are currently formulating a plan for dealing with the scrapyards in our region, but this is something that the industry needs to come together on. As the price of stainless continues to rise, brewers will see an increase in their kegs disappearing and ending up as scrap. This is an issue I would like to see the BA address, as it affects us all. Has this been discussed within the BA? Can we somehow get some industry mobilization to put some legal pressure on scrapyards and take away the market for scrapping kegs? The railroad industry did it for rails - scrapyards won't touch 'em.
Neil Witte
Boulevard Brewing Company
nwitte@boulevard.com
Comment