Guinness owner Diageo plan to build major new Dublin brewery at St James’s Gate

Your pint of the black stuff is not in danger, but there are big changes afoot at Guinness in Dublin.

This week the legendary Irish brewery announced it plans to build a new brewery base in Dublin, but it will also close two other plants in Ireland in the process.

Guinness parent company Diageo announced its plan yesterday to concentrate its Irish beer making operations in the new $195 million brewery it has built at its longstanding Saint James' Gate base in Dublin, which for decades has been Ireland's top tourist attraction.

However the breweries it operates in Kilkenny and Dundalk will close in 2013 with the loss of about 100 jobs, Diageo said. Currently those breweries make other beers, not Guinness stout.

The latest moves were announced three and a half years after Diageo had indicated it had ambitious plans to build a brewery west of Dublin. Those plans were shelved in 2009 after Ireland's property market crash.

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