Germany’s brewing industry is facing another setback as yet another significant mid-sized brewery has run into serious financial difficulty. The plan insolvency of Brauhaus Altenkunstadt Andreas Leikeim GmbH & Co. KG adds to a growing list of restructurings, closures and insolvency proceedings across the country. In recent months, brewing sites have been shut at Bischofshof Brauerei in Regensburg (inside.beer, 17.1.2026), Brauerei Irlbach in Lower Bavaria (inside.beer, 9.1.2026) and Privatbrauerei Lang in Jandelsbrunn, while Eichbaum Brauerei in Mannheim entered insolvency under self-administration on 1 January 2026 (inside.beer, 29.10.2025). Together, these cases underline the mounting pressure on Germany’s traditional brewing sector.
Against this backdrop, the Franconian family brewer Leikeim has now confirmed that it has filed for insolvency in self-administration. According to managing director Andreas Leikeim, years of declining volumes and revenues, combined with sharply rising costs, led to a liquidity bottleneck that made a court-supervised restructuring unavoidable. Falling beer consumption in Germany, higher energy and raw material prices and the lasting economic effects of the COVID-19 pandemic have all weighed heavily on the business.
Founded in 1887, Leikeim has been run as an independent family brewery for five generations and is widely known beyond Franconia for its beers and soft drinks in distinctive swing-top bottles. With an annual output of around 200,000 hectolitres, the company ranks among the larger privately owned breweries in Bavaria and currently employs about 100 people at its Altenkunstadt site. Despite the insolvency filing, production and deliveries are continuing, and employee wages are initially secured through insolvency payments.
In recent years, Leikeim had already taken steps to counter the structural challenges of the German beer market. These included expanding export activities, investing in alcohol-free beers and lemonades, broadening distribution channels and implementing cost-saving measures. While these initiatives helped stabilise parts of the business, they ultimately proved insufficient to offset the sustained market headwinds.
The outlook for Leikeim now depends on the success of the self-administration process. Together with a court-appointed trustee, management is currently reviewing various restructuring options aimed at securing the brewery’s long-term future. Whether the Franconian swing-top specialist can emerge strengthened from this process will hinge on its ability to realign costs and its product portfolio in a shrinking and increasingly competitive beer market.
