Saint Vincent passed to Britain for good in 1783, became a British associated state on 27 October 1969 and an independent country, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, on 27 October 1979. The sources found record no commercial brewery on the islands before 1985; the Danish brewer Royal Unibrew had entered the local market in the 1970s with its Ceres malt, now sold as Vita Malt. The country's own beer, Hairoun, carries the Kalinago name of Saint Vincent, Hairouna, 'Land of the Blessed'.
St. Vincent Brewery Limited was set up at Campden Park, near Kingstown, in partnership with the German brewer Haase Brauerei (later Brauhaase International Management GmbH) and local company and private shareholders. The same German group stood behind Wadadli in Antigua and Kubuli in Dominica. The company says it was established in June 1985, when it began bottling Hairoun, and it held its 20th anniversary on 2 June 2005. Hairoun is a 4.8% lager brewed with barley, hops and spring water; the company lists Monde Selection gold medals for it. The brewery opened with 65 staff, Hairoun Lager and a few soft drinks, and added Vitamalt in 1991. By 2005 it had 88 permanent and about 30 casual workers and also produced Guinness, Coca-Cola and Fanta. Its tax exemption ran out in 2000.
In July 2007 Royal Unibrew, which already owned the breweries of Antigua and Dominica, paid US$9.3 million for 52% of St. Vincent Brewery and so held 76%; Diageo, Henry Barth & Sons and local investors kept the rest. In August 2009 it agreed to sell its Caribbean stakes, 76.5% of the Vincentian brewery among them, to Cervecería Nacional Dominicana (CND) for US$31 million in all, and in March 2010 CND's subsidiary International Brewing Limited took them over. Presidente, CND's lager, was added under licence in 2010, and on 15 November 2010 a canning line of over 1,500 cans an hour ended the import of cans for Hairoun. By 2012 Anheuser-Busch InBev held the controlling stake in CND and so became the brewery's effective owner. Smallie, a lighter and sweeter 250 ml beer called Hairoun's 'little sister', was launched on 1 April 2022.
Craft beer is young. Krew Brewing opened on St. Vincent in 2015 and is called the country's first craft brewery. 32 Islands Brewery opened on the private island of Mustique in July 2018: its founder Angus Archibald started with a five-barrel system and a first beer, Mustique Gold, then a West Indies Pale Ale and Mustique Blues, and in 2019 seasonals with local ginger, turmeric and passion fruit. At Basil's Bar on Mustique Hairoun was still about 60% of beer volume in 2019, and Uncommon Caribbean (2026) repeats that four of every five beers sold in the country are Hairoun.
In January 2025 the brewery announced that KOSCAB Holdings, a Coca-Cola bottling company, would buy it from CND's shareholder SLU Beverages, part of AB InBev. On 31 July 2025 KOSCAB announced a majority interest in SLU Beverages, which also holds Banks Holdings of Barbados and Dominica Brewery and Beverages. Wadadli, the Antiguan beer, is now brewed by the company. The brewery marked its 40th anniversary in May 2025 with a limited Hairoun Ruby Label printed with Vincentians' names. Its Guinness was judged the best in the Americas for 2022-23 and in February 2025 ranked among the top ten in the world in the Guinness League of Excellence, number one in the region for the third time in three years. On 22 January 2026 the Fourth Earl of Iveagh visited the plant.
