Tooheys

Tooheys

Founded	1869
Headquarters	Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
Production output	300 million litres
Owner	Mitsubishi keiretsu (through Kirin Holdings)

Tooheys is a brewery in the suburb of Lidcombe, in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. It produces beers and ciders under the Tooheys and Hahn Brewery trademarks, and is part of the Lion beverages group which was acquired by the Japanese Kirin Company in 2009.

Tooheys dates from 1869, when John Thomas Toohey (an Irish immigrant to Melbourne) obtained his brewing licence. Toohey and his brother James Matthew ran pubs in Melbourne (The Limerick Arms and The Great Britain) before moving to Sydney in the 1860s. They commenced brewing Tooheys Black Old Ale in a brewery in the area of present-day Darling Harbour. By 1875, demand for their beer had soared and they established The Standard Brewery in inner-city Surry Hills. In 1902, the company went public as Tooheys Limited, and commenced brewing lager (the present-day Tooheys New) in 1930. In 1955, the brewery moved west to Lidcombe. In 1967, Tooheys bought competitor Miller's Brewers located in Taverner's Hill, closing that brewery in 1975.

In 1980, NSW-based Tooheys merged with Queensland's Castlemaine Perkins to form Castlemaine Tooheys.Bond Corporation purchased Castlemaine Tooheys in 1985.

Castlemaine Tooheys were represented as the appellants in the landmark 1990 case of Castlemaine Tooheys Ltd v South Australia, heard by the High Court of Australia. Since the brewery operated outside South Australia, but sold its products there, a South Australian Act Amendment, imposing a substantial refund value for non-refillable bottles produced in other states, was ruled to be inconsistent with section 92 of the Constitution of Australia. Due to the significant discriminatory and protectionist financial impacts that they faced, Castlemaine Tooheys successfully invalidated the law.