Job Cuts at Mannheim’s Eichbaum Brewery: 140 to Go as Bottling Shifts Collapse
Published on 06/18/2026 at 19:47 | Redaktion boerse-global.de
The mood inside the doomed brewery was described as “denkbar schlecht” – as bad as it gets – by its works council, after management confirmed that 140 of the roughly 300 employees would lose their jobs. At a staff meeting, the announcement triggered emotional scenes. Eighty of those affected are to move into a transfer company, an interim employment scheme common in German restructurings, while only 160 workers will remain after the overhaul.
The actual number of redundancies is less severe than the 200 job losses the NGG trade union had earlier forecast. Still, the restructuring plan is radical: bottle-filling operations, previously run across three shifts, will be slashed to a single shift, fundamentally altering workflows for those who stay.
Beyond the production cutbacks, the future of the brewery’s real estate is also in play. The University Hospital Mannheim (Uniklinikum Mannheim) has entered talks with the insolvency administrator to buy the site, which the clinic needs for its own construction projects. The state science ministry confirmed the negotiations. This follows the collapse of an earlier deal to sell the property to the financial investor Lafayette Mittelstand Capital. The city of Mannheim had already examined a pre-emptive purchase right in the spring. Meanwhile, the brewery’s gastronomy distribution has been sold to Park & Bellheimer AG.
Eichbaum’s insolvency, which began as a self-administered proceeding in October 2025 and became a regular insolvency in January 2026, is part of a broader crisis hitting German brewers. The Schussenrieder Brauerei Ott also filed for insolvency, putting 40 jobs at risk. Nationally, beer consumption fell to a record low in 2025, six percent below the prior year’s figure. In the state of Baden-Württemberg alone, the number of breweries dropped from 205 in 2023 to 190 in the first half of 2026. The Warsteiner group is also facing planned closures at its sites in Paderborn and Herford.
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