Thomas Hardy can bottle up to 30 million cases of alcoholic and non-alcoholic beverages a year at its sites in Cheshire and Cumbria. Its customers include Molson Coors, Heineken and Fever-Tree. Peter Ward, who worked for Courage for 28 years, founded the company in 1997 when he bought the assets of the Eldridge Pope brewery. Now headed up by his son, Christopher, 41, profits reached £3.7m in 2018. In October last year it secured a £10m loan to increase production.