Cronx, the award-winning craft beer brewery based in an industrial unit in New Addington which had its own bar on Croydon High Street, has gone out of business.
Gone flat: Cronx Brewery has closed with debts of more than £140,000
The decision was taken at a formal meeting of the company’s board, including Cronx co-founder Mark Russell, that was held in November. The Cronx Tap, their High Street pub, had called last orders for a final time two months earlier.
The company, with an address off Vulcan Way, is now going through the process of voluntary liquidation, with appointed liquidators selling off any assets to pay off its debts.
The company website, from where they offered online sales, has been taken offline, its phones cut off. There’s been no social media posts by the Cronx Brewery or the Cronx Tap for almost a year.
Before they shut down their website, the management had posted this ominous message: “The Cronx store is closed for the foreseeable future. Sorry for any inconvenience this may cause. We don’t have any products to show here right now.”
Bright beginnings: Mark Russell (left) and Simon Dale when they launched the Cronx Brewery in 2012
Cronx was formed in 2012 after Russell and friend Simon Dale met at the Crystal Palace Beer Festival and came up with the idea of a local micro-brewery, becoming the first commercial beer-makers in Croydon since 1954, all done with £70,000 of their own savings and some private investment.
By 2016, the Cronx had a bar, selling their beers, as one of the original tenants at Boozepark, next to East Croydon Station. An entry in The Good Beer Guide, the publication from CAMRA, the Campaign for Real Ale, followed in 2018, and among their other outlets, Cronx were supplying their various ales and lagers to the Fairfield Halls and to football club bars at Selhurst Park and Croydon Athletic.
Having weathered the considerable storm of covid lockdowns, in 2021 Cronx opted not to renew its Boozepark lease, amid some suggestion that they were among several outlets who had wearied of the venue owners’ attempts to monopolise bar revenues for their increasingly frequent mass ticketed events, such as screenings of England football matches or the final of TV show Love Island.
The Cronx Tap, on Croydon High Street, was their new home, opening on Coronation Day in 2023. The spacious venue did all the usual, pub-like things like staging weekly quizzes, but they also exhibited art works, held stand-up comedy shows, music sessions and cult movie nights, while having a Venezuelan pop-up kitchen serving food.
Off tap: the Cronx’s pub closed in September 2024, having opened little more than a year earlier
It is listed in the 2025 edition of the Good Beer Guide, which describes the Crox Tap as a “friendly and welcoming pub”.
“Two hand pumps serve Cronx beers, sometimes featuring a guest beer like Titsey. A wide range of craft beers plus five or six ciders are served from 20 taps,” the Guide’s entry notes, a reminder of what might have been.
The Cronx Tap in fact closed “temporarily”, according to the local CAMRA branch, in mid-September 2024 while seeking a new licensee. It has never re-opened.
According to documents lodged at Companies House, at the end of March 2023 – the most recent accounts filed – the company owed £144,000 to various creditors. The company was threatened with compulsory strike-off during 2023, but managed its way out of that.
By the end of October last year, when the directors reached the tough decision to end their losing battle, according to the liquidators’ assessment the company had assets and stock worth just £12,710.
Back in 2012, when the Cronx Brewery was setting out, co-owner Russell told the BBC that Croydon is “an up-and-coming area and we like to feel we’re part of a new wave of businesses that are starting up and making that happen”.
That was the same year that Westfield, supported enthusiastically by local politicians from both major parties and with encouragement from greedy property owners and speculators, announced that they were going to spend more than £1billion on regenerating Croydon town centre.
We all know what happened next.Pretty much nothing.
Which makes Mark Russell, Simon Dale, the Cronx Brewery and the Cronx Tap and their handful of employees among the latest unwitting victims of Westfield’s development blight in Croydon.
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Such a shame they will be missed.
Sad news. I spent a number of happy evenings in the Cronx Tap, a friendly place to go and it also felt good to be supporting a small local business.
On top of the Whitgift mess, the failure of Fairfield Halls was also a major contibuting factor in the decline of Croydon’s nightime economy. Sadly, it’s the small businesses who suffer most when these large projects don’t deliver.
Oh no! Is there no other way? Crowd funding? Brewers goes into liquidation is a great headline – sad but accurate
The remaining directors of Cronx registered in November for a couple of similar-sounding, new companies. That might lie behind the announcement of a new licensee expected by December. As yet, no firm news – enquiries continue.
Does Inside Croydon smell a rat? Given the debts, how couold they attract funding? Aren’t there rules on directors resurfacing?
That’s a shame. I asked Mrs Towcrate to get me a crate of Cronx’s fine ales for my Christmas present, and the company’s website simply said the shop was closed. Now we know why.
I think one of the many reasons for the decline and fall is CEO Mark Russell’s unwise decision to “Back Barwell” in the run up to the the 2015 General Election https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mbwx5LhJny0 Hope he doesn’t make the same mistake with his phoenix-like Croydon Brewing Company Ltd
A son of Cronx is on the way? I thought they were too cronxed out for that.
Sorry to hear this. The Kotchin was a very nice pint. I met one of the owners at Croydon FC a couple of years ago. The club had an agreement with the brewery to sell their beers at The Arena, including Kotchin (on tap & in bottles). He seemed really confident about the brewery’s future, having just opened the pub on the High Street and said he and his partners were looking to expand the business in the South East. Maybe they overreached and the business model became unsustainable. Whatever happened it’s sad to see a brewery disappear from Croydon. Bizarrely I never saw their beers on sale in my local; The Claret & Ale.
Simon Dale hasn’t been involved with Cronx since 2019.
And your point is?
Because you refer to him as a “victim” in your closing paragraph.
So someone who spent years of their life, working hard and using thousands of pounds of their own money to establish a company that has been badly let down by a blighted and bankrupt borough is not a victim in your eyes.
Tough crowd.