company had paid mere asset value for Higsons as the company had been reporting poor profits. There was virtually no overlap between the two companies, and the takeover brought Boddingtons to Merseyside for the first time. By this time Strangeways was producing only two beers, a bitter and a mild, with bitter constituting over 90 per cent of production. In 1986, the company employed 280 people and operated 530 tied houses, and while Strangeways Brewery had a capacity of 500,000 barrels a year, it was operating at around 50 per cent capacity. That year the company introduced its own lager, brewing Kaltenberg under licence. In 1987, the company rejected a £270 million reverse takeover bid by Midsummer Leisure. By this time Boddingtons had a tied estate of 520 pubs. In 1988, the company closed the Oldham Brewery with the loss of 70 jobs, and shed 140 transport jobs at Higsons and Strangeways by contracting out delivery work to TNT. Boddingtons remained independent until 1989, when Ewart Boddington sold Strangeways Brewery and the Boddingtons brand (but not the tied estate) to Whitbread for £50.7 million. Whitbread was motivated to plug a gap in its portfolio by owning a credible national cask ale brand. The sale was amicable, with both parties aware that Whitbread capital and distribution could make the Boddingtons brand national, although some Boddington family board members had been resistant to the sale. Boddingtons had been in decline before the Whitbread takeover, and although it retained an almost "cult" following within its Manchester heartland, only 5 per cent of sales were outside the North West. Whitbread era Whitbread transformed the brand from regional to national, expanding production from 200,000 to 850,000 barrels a year between 1989 and 1995. By 1993 the cask version was outsold only by Tetley and John Smith's, and the majority of sales were outside of the North West. By 1994 it was the fourth-highest selling bitter brand in the country. The canned variant was distributed nationwide from 1990 and was the highest-selling canned bitter in the UK from 1992 until 2000. The beer was officially exported overseas from 1993, initially to Canada. The rise in sales of the beer coincided with the elevation of Manchester from "city of dark, beaten mills to the cultural magnet of Madchester". Manchester and the North of England were now fashionable in the public consciousness and rejuvenated from industrial slump. Whitbread