is a brewing-centered alcoholic drinks company operating in Australia and New Zealand. Since 2009 it is a wholly owned subsidiary of Kirin of Japan. It is the beer-centered arm of a bigger business, Lion Nathan National Foods, which also produces leading brands of fruit juice and dairy products.

In Auckland, New Zealand, the good quality of the spring water in the Khyber Pass Road area attracted a number of brewers in the 19th century. In 1923 two of these breweries, Lion Brewery and Captain Cook Brewery, joined a merger of the 10 largest breweries in the country to form New Zealand Breweries. In 1977 the name of the company was changed to Lion Breweries; in 1986 it became Lion Corporation, and after a merger with LD Nathan and Company the name changed again to Lion Nathan in 1988.

The Australian part of Lion Nathan also goes back to colonial times. The century-old regional breweries Castlemaine from Brisbane and Tooheys from Sydney merged into Castlemaine Tooheys in 1981. Alan Bond acquired the Swan Brewery in Perth in the 1982 and bought Castlemaine Tooheys in 1987 to form Bond Brewing, only to go into receivership within 2 years.

In 1990 Lion Nathan bought Bond Brewing and merged the Australian and New Zealand brewing businesses to lay the foundations of the modern Lion Nathan. In 1993 the South Australian Brewing Company of Adelaide was added to the business. Douglas Myers, chairman from the LD Nathan part of the company, sold his substantial shareholding to Kirin in 1998 when he retired. In 2007, the historic James Boag’s Brewery of Tasmania was purchased. The latest chapter in the story started in October of 2009 when Kirin lifted its shareholding from just under 50% to full ownership.

Lion Nathan operates major regional breweries in Brisbane, Perth, Sydney, and Adelaide in Australia. Major brands include XXXX, Tooheys, Hahn, Swan, West End, and Boag’s. The major breweries in New Zealand are in Auckland, where a new brewery was commissioned in 2009 to replace the old historic Khyber Pass Road site, Christchurch, and Dunedin. The major brands include Lion, Steinlager, Canterbury, and Speight’s. Lion Nathan also operates a small number of craft breweries. James Squire and Knappstein are the main craft brands for Lion Nathan in Australia, whereas the Mac’s range of beers are their major craft beers in New Zealand.