“Opening up interprovincial trade of alcohol would have a very detrimental effect on the breweries that are here in Newfoundland and Labrador,” Mr. Farrell said in an interview Friday. “There’s no upside. You’d flood the market with trucked-in beer.”
Yes, getting things onto the island will be expensive, but if you have a war chest, a distribution network, and the facilities to produce at scale, you can enter the market just fine. And if a bunch of others do as well, the lot of them can squeeze out the local brewers.
Weirdly enough, the amount of money you have today directly impacts how much you can fuck over someone smaller than you tomorrow.
This article doesn’t talk about small brewers though. It’s talking about the two largest beer companies in Canada. Yes, interprovincial trade will kill Labatt and Molson production in Newfoundland, as they move production inland to gain benefits from economies of scale. But small brewers will be fine. They might even see a growth as they gain access to bigger markets.
It’s just two different markets. Craft/local beer is one market, and really doesn’t compete at all with the likes of Molson and Labatt.