From planters’ beer at Nuwara Eliya to a listed company near Colombo.

Lion Lager is the flagship beer of Lion Brewery (Ceylon) PLC, and its history begins in the hills. The company’s 2024/25 annual report traces brewing on the island to 1849, when Samuel Baker set up a small brewery at the hill station of Nuwara Eliya. In 1881, the report says, the Belgian brewer and chemist Auguste de Bavay worked with Mountsteven Bremer, a Nuwara Eliya planter, to set up the island’s second brewery; Carson Cumberbatch, in a 2024 post, dates Lion’s establishment to 1881. English Wikipedia says brewing in Sri Lanka grew up mainly to serve colonial tea planters.

Ownership passed through several hands. The annual report says the Murree Brewery Company took over ownership and management in 1884, that a consortium led by the brewery’s former transport agent, the Irishman Lindsay White, took over in 1893, and that The Ceylon Brewery became a limited liability company in 1910. In 1954, the report says, the company introduced Lion Ale as its first draught beer for the local market.

The modern structure took shape in the 1990s. The report says The Ceylon Brewery was listed on the Colombo Stock Exchange in 1991, when the Carlsberg Group took an 8 per cent share, and that the first Carlsberg brewed in Sri Lanka followed in 1992. The Ceylon Brewery became a subsidiary of Carson Cumberbatch in 1993, a date English Wikipedia also gives. In 1996 The Lion Brewery (Ceylon) Ltd was incorporated as a subsidiary of The Ceylon Brewery, and the Carlsberg Group acquired 25 per cent of it, according to the annual report; English Wikipedia, citing the Daily News (2002), gives the same Carlsberg share and year. Lion Brewery itself was listed in 1997.

A gold lion, a shield and a redrawn icon.

The brand has had to speak through its packaging. Carson Cumberbatch wrote in 2024 that alcohol advertising has been restricted in Sri Lanka since 2006, leaving Lion in what it called a “dark market” where the pack is the main advertising platform.

That made the label the place for change. The group says Lion was relaunched in March 2022 with a renewed focus on packaging design, and that because the brand covers three beer types, a lager, a stout and a strong beer, the team ran qualitative testing with Sri Lankan consumers to find the design elements that fitted its story. According to Carson Cumberbatch, the result uses vibrant yellows and gold inspired by a Lion label from the late 1990s, a luminous horizon around a redrawn lion icon, a die-cut shield shape meant to carry cues of leadership and a premium feel, a distinct colour scheme for each beer, and metallised labels with varnishes for tonal and textural effects. The same account introduces Lion Ice, a lighter beer aimed at younger drinkers.

The annual report describes the next step as the Lion Master Brand Strategy, which the company says brings all its products under a single “Lion” brand identity built around three values, Leadership, Adventure and Global Pride, with a consistent look, feel and message across every sub-category. The company says it is also working to source its labels locally.

Design and documentation.

The seven brands in this group are all lagers and beers from South and Southeast Asia: Angkor from Cambodia, 333, Huda and Larue from Vietnam, Bira 91 from India, Lion Lager from Sri Lanka and Myanmar Beer from Myanmar. Beer brands in general sit at many different points in the trade, from names that grew up inside a single national brewery to labels that now belong to much larger international brewing groups, and a single brand can be poured everywhere from a street-side stall to a hotel bar.

A beer brand’s identity is usually carried less by the liquid than by a name, a label, a can and the place it promises, because the company behind the name may have changed hands, taken on foreign partners or moved its brewing far beyond the city where it started. That makes the questions behind each name worth asking plainly: who started it, who owns it now, and where its beer is actually brewed and packed.

Each guide separates what independent sources record from what the company says about itself — its founding story, its shareholders over time, where its beer is brewed and how its labels and advertising have changed — and marks plainly what rests only on the company’s own word.

One brewery at Biyagama, many beers and an export trade.

Lion Lager is no longer brewed in the hills. The annual report says Lion Brewery opened a new brewery at Biyagama, near Colombo, in 1998 and ceased operations at Nuwara Eliya in 2001; Carson Cumberbatch’s own history page dates the Biyagama facility to 1997. Today, the company says, the Biyagama brewery makes beers under the Lion, Carlsberg and Guinness names. English Wikipedia lists the Lion range as Lion, Lion Strong and Lion Stout, with Carlsberg brewed under licence. The report says Lion acquired Millers Brewery in 2014, partnered with Diageo in 2021 to brew Guinness stout locally, and completed an innovation brewery in 2024. English Wikipedia, citing The Island, says Millers Brewery had operated since 1962 and that Lion has produced the beers Millers used to make since 2015. Carson Cumberbatch itself was formed in 1947, the group says, when Carson and Company and Cumberbatch & Company merged.

Ownership is layered. The 2024/25 annual report says the company operates under the umbrella of Carson Cumberbatch, with ownership stakes held by Ceylon Beverage Holdings PLC and the Carlsberg Group.

The beer has long travelled. The annual report dates the first export of Lion beer and stout, to Japan, to 1988, and says the company now exports to about 17 countries, including the United Kingdom, Australia, the Netherlands and Japan, and also sells in the Maldives.

The name needs a little care: Lion is also the name of the Australian and New Zealand brewing group behind Lion Red, an unrelated company.

For a design guide, Lion shows how a beer brand barred from advertising can make the label do the work, reviving a late-1990s gold and redrawing its lion inside a shield. Compare Elephant House, the Sri Lankan soda brand, and Tuborg, one of the Carlsberg Group’s own beers. For this guide we use lion gold, bronze and label black with a serif, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Lion Lager’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.