'Tough few months ahead' for breweries in North Yorkshire
The industry is continuing to grapple with high energy costs
There are fears North Yorkshire could lose more pubs and breweries over the next few months as high energy costs continue to bite.
New analysis has found 150 pubs in England and Wales closed in the first quarter of this year.
Jim Soden is from Scarborough Brewery and he said: "It's quite energy intensive brewing beer and not only that, we're having supply issues, cleaning products and a lot of things have not only gone up 10 or 15 percent, we're looking at things that have gone up 200 to 300 percent in costs.
"There's been quite a lot of brewery closures and weekly there's new breweries added to the list. Last year there was around 86 breweries that closed and this year they're anticipating around 200 this year. It could be that you weather the storm and a year from now it might be the odd meat on the bone in the market but I think it's having a knock-on effect to the breweries."
Jim is hoping cuts of taxes on drinks from August will help keep the industry afloat.
He added: "When it comes to draft beer, you're going to paying less duty than you would be in small, packaged beer. I think with the idea of getting people more into the pubs than they are going to the supermarket and buying ridiculously cheap beer, so hopefully from August onwards things might change but I think it might be very difficult few months leading into the summer."