Tiny Rebel: Wales' largest brewery announces permanent closure of Newport bar

Wales' largest brewery has announced plans to close one of its bars later this month.

Tiny Rebel confirmed its Newport bar will shut in a social media post on Tuesday.

The company blamed a drop in footfall and a "significant" increase in operating costs since the pandemic for the decision.

It said the move had been made following "a full review," and is designed to make the company "financially fit for the future."

The bar on Newport High Street will close at the end of the month, having opened as a pop-up in 2015.

The centre has seen some changes in the past few years with Newport Market reopening in 2022 and a new 500-capacity music venue opening its doors last weekend.

But the brewery, which has other bars in Cardiff and Rogerstone which will remain open, said: "Since the pandemic Newport city centre has been slowly imploding, with retail and hospitality suffering the worst."

Tiny Rebel also said on X, formerly Twitter, the hospitality sector had received "limited support from the [Welsh] government."

With other branches remaining open, it added: "We're doing everything we can to support our staff in their next steps, whether that's with us or an opportunity somewhere else."

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Reacting to the news about Tiny Rebel, Conservative MS Tom Giffard, the shadow minister for culture, tourism and sport, said: “It’s a damning indictment of Labour’s hospitality policies that one of Wales’ greatest recent success stories is having to scale back its presence in Newport.

“Tiny Rebel is a fantastic business, with a range of popular products that are seen in bars and pubs across the UK. The fact that a brand of this scale is struggling within the Welsh economy is frankly terrifying."

Mr Giffard added: “Unless Labour puts in place a real strategy to keep our hospitality industry vibrant and thriving, we will find more businesses like Tiny Rebel unable to keep their doors open.”

A Welsh Government spokesperson said: “We are very aware that the ongoing cost-of-living and cost-of-doing-business crises continues to present difficulties for small and independent businesses in all sectors across the country.

“We are doing all we can, with the resources and powers available to us, to provide support in these difficult times.

“We provide a range of permanent non-domestic rates reliefs, worth £250m annually and fully funded by the Welsh Government. This includes Small Business Rates Relief, which supports ratepayers for around 70,000 properties across Wales, of which over 50,000 receive full relief."

The spokesperson added: "We are also providing a fifth successive year of support for retail, leisure and hospitality businesses with their rates bills, at a cost of £78m. This builds on the almost £1bn of support provided in rates relief schemes to these sectors since 2020-21.”

Newport City Council has also been approached for comment.

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