70,000 pints of Guinness stolen from Cheshire warehouse, police say

Police in Cheshire, north-west England, are searching for thieves who drove away from a warehouse in Runcorn with enough Guinness to pour about 70,000 pints. The theft happened on Monday evening on the Whitehouse Industrial Estate. Diageo, the drinks company that owns Guinness, runs the warehouse.

Police say two trucks were used. At 7:55 pm, a driver left the site towing a trailer loaded with Guinness barrels and headed towards the Mersey Gateway bridge. A second driver arrived at 9:12 pm and left 18 minutes later, travelling towards Rainhill and Watkinson Way. Together, the trailers carried more than 800 barrels. Because each barrel holds about 88 pints, police estimate the missing beer at around 70,400 pints.

The beer is worth £115,000, and the trailers are worth about £50,000. That makes the total value around £205,000. The barrels had been prepared for delivery to pubs.

Police believe the two drivers were men. The first is described as white, with a short dark beard and a beanie hat, and the second is believed to have been wearing a cap. Detective Sergeant Gary McClatchy, a police officer working on the case, said: "It is famously said that Guinness is good for you, but that is only the case when it has been bought and paid for." He added that officers would work until they recovered all the stolen items.

Police have asked witnesses, and any drivers who have a camera in their car that recorded the area, to come forward. The theft follows another recent beer theft in the United States, where thieves took about 34,000 cans of Pabst Blue Ribbon from a warehouse in Southern California.