Welcome in, today is Friday, October ninth, and we begin in Japan, where Drinks International reports antitrust raids on the country's four largest brewers. Japan's antitrust body has searched the offices of four local brewing giants over allegations they breached the country's competition law. That is Just Drinks. Drinks International reports the companies raided were Asahi, Kirin, Suntory and Sapporo, and that the suspicion is collusion to raise beer prices. Neither account reports the allegations as substantiated, and neither carries a company response. With those four holding the bulk of one of the world's larger beer markets, an inquiry into how their prices were set reaches pricing practice for the importers and global partners tied to them. Competition-law practitioners in the reaction lean toward reading the use of compulsory investigative powers as a signal that a criminal referral is being weighed, rather than an administrative resolution alone, with a shrinking domestic market the recurring backdrop. Also today, Carlsberg Britvic plans to shut the Marston's brewery and logistics operation in Burton upon Trent in the summer of twenty twenty-seven, putting around three hundred ten jobs at risk. The Independent reports the company cited structural decline in the ale category and a need to create greater long-term value, with chief executive Paul Davies saying UK cask ale volumes have more than halved in less than a decade. Per that same account, Hobgoblin, McEwan's and Brooklyn stay in the portfolio, while other cask and regional ale brands go up for sale, no names disclosed. That is where the volume question now sits for anyone buying ale by the barrel. The site has brewed since eighteen thirty-four, and came to Carlsberg through a twenty twenty joint venture bought out in twenty twenty-four. The Campaign for Real Ale called the decision an absolute disgrace and renewed its demand that the Competition and Markets Authority investigate consolidation in UK beer, per the Express and Star. Reaction leans toward an exit from cask rather than a single-site cost cut. Separately, a development on Constellation Brands, following our earlier report on its second-quarter beat. Financial News reports the company raised its GAAP earnings guidance to eleven eighty-five to twelve fifty-five a share, from eleven fifty to twelve twenty, leaving unchanged the comparable range we reported. Per that same reporting, net income was five hundred sixty-five point eight million dollars, against four hundred sixty-six million a year earlier. Beer operating margin fell one hundred sixty basis points to thirty-nine percent, and beer depletions slipped zero point six percent, the line that reads straight through to volume planning. Management expects the high end of its comparable range if September trends hold, per a transcript carried by The Motley Fool. Reaction keeps returning to those depletions as the number that actually matters. Now to California, where SFGATE argues the state's eighty-four-billion-dollar wine business is under pressure at every tier at once, from family labels to corporate groups, following our earlier reporting on unsold grape contracts. The argument has an agricultural economist at UC Davis reaching back to Prohibition for a comparison, and names lost exports as a hard cost: the Wine Institute tells that account the Canadian boycott of American wine cost producers three hundred fifty-seven million dollars last year. One San Joaquin Valley family winery is now listed at just under seventy-eight million, its Canadian shipments down about ninety-five percent year on year, per that same piece. Read through, that is grape contracts and bulk pricing. Industry reaction splits on whether the contraction is structural or a cyclical correction. Now, a few more headlines moving the trade today. Brewbound reports a WARN Act notice filed on October first puts one hundred seventy-four permanent layoffs, effective November first, on Diageo's Guinness Open Gate Brewery closure in Maryland. Fortune reports European beer consumption fell three point two percent last year and is down nine point two percent since twenty nineteen, per Brewers of Europe, with Heineken's Europe president pointing to price inflation and leaning on cost cuts. Storyboard eighteen reports Indian distillers are investing in distillation, maturation and aged stock as the India-UK pact cuts whisky duty from one hundred fifty percent to seventy-five, and in stages toward forty by the tenth year. The Telegraph reports Scottish, Irish and Welsh interests have launched an offensive to stop English single malts gaining protected status, extending the labelling fight we covered last month. And finally, the Beer Institute reports August beer supply narrowed to down one percent year on year, on an import rebound, per Brewbound.