Our History:

My Experience

Where it all began, in a galaxy far far away, or it seems to be anyway. Back in the mid eighties I was recruited to work CAMRA Beer & Cider Festivals, originally on security but soon got behind the bars as retail was in my blood, so hospitality was the next step. However although I like beers I have always preferred ciders, where as the guys who worked on the cider bar preferred beers. So we swapped. Five months later on the next festival my bar manager fell over the bar and was dismissed.

As the only person on the bar with any kind of management experience I stepped up. By the following year I was running the “loopy bar” aptly named as half of the bar was cider over 6% and the other half was beers over 6%. I ran the Cider Bar from 1986 to 2013, at both Sheffield Festivals. Increasing there range from eight to twelve to eighteen to twenty eight to thirty six then up to forty two ciders, with no fruity flavoured ones.

 I also used to work the Great British Beer & Cider Festival in London 1989 to 1996. Where I learnt a lot more about ciders, the trees the soil and the producers struggle to sell their ciders. During this time I started to work for my local branch of CAMRA promoting ciders and getting more pubs to stock it.

By 2013 the number of pubs had increased from six to over forty selling real ciders. It was at this time I decided to take the next step and start my own company selling ciders to these pubs, clubs and festivals.

Company History

Ciderman United Kingdom trading as Ciderman UK ran from 2013 to 2023. With a depot in the East End of Sheffield close to the M1. We used to do, two to three buying trips a year driving 1700-2000 miles over two days visiting the farms, sampling the ciders and talking to the farmers and cider makers. We have met several people of whom we are still friends with now and loads more, some who have sadly passed away and some have closed down. Whilst some new producers have emerged and some producers have joined forces to stay afloat.

In 2019 we decided to streamline the business as it was the only way to survive, so we closed our depot thus freeing up capital, use other distributors when possible, create mini hubs so that ciders could be collected from one central point in each county and use couriers to collect them, therefore no need to hire a van, pay insurance, buy diesel, hire a driver or pay for costly accommodation and food whilst on the road.

Then in 2020 Covid hit, Cider being a live product couldn’t cross county line, plus pubs were closed and festivals banned. The company went into remission and stalled, even when Covid regulations were lifted our producers had wound down their production and didn’t return to full production until September / October 2022, meaning very few ciders were available until the Spring of 2023.

In 2023 we decided to think about expanding into Europe, to do this we really needed to be a Limited Company which is when Ciderman UK Ltd started. However it required a new VAT / EORI and AWRS registration, as we were already committed to supplying our first big festival of 2023, we used our existing VAT / AWRS number for that as it didn’t expire until June. Once the festival was over we applied for the new AWRS which we got within a week or so, but the VAT / EORI status stalled and due to an AI glitch at HMRC we were not allowed to start trading until after the 27^th January 2024. Hopefully everything is now in the green and ready to roll.

CORE RANGE