A Newcastle brewer says her industry has been "forgotten" during the coronavirus crisis.
It was confirmed on Thursday morning that the entire region will have to endure the harshest level of restrictions for at least two more weeks after December 2.
That means pubs, bars, restaurants, cinemas, theatres, and other indoor venues will have to remain closed for a while longer, with a first review of the measures due by December 16.
Julia Austin, director at Tyne Bank Brewery, said that some brewers have been "forgotten".
She said: "Brewers have been forgotten in this whole process unfortunately. They have three sales streams; direct to pub, direct to customer either online or from their premises if licensed or direct to retail for example bottle shops or supermarkets.
"Sales to pubs have reduced to near zero in Tier 2 and 3 especially if they mainly do real ale, a product which has a eight week shelf life and a five day shelf life once opened.
"If the brewery wasn’t licensed to sell from the premises they were not allowed to do so unlike pubs which were given a blanket permission to sell takeaway."
Ms Austin said that direct sales online or from retail premises don't bridge the gap.
She continued: "Sales to direct to customer if online, and licensed and retail are still an option but typically for small independent brewers this is typically around 10-20% of their turnover.
"In the first lockdown, breweries were given no help if they operated out of rate free premises.
"Only hospitality venues qualified for the additional grants initially. This was reviewed on a case-by-case basis via the councils and some of the brewers with larger premises may have negotiated support. The taproom is a large part of our business and luckily we managed to qualify for the hospitality grant."
Ms Austin also said that when pubs were open rules restricting customers to visiting in single households caused real ale sales to plummet.
She added: "In the initial release from lockdown the two household rule meant things could start to return to normal and sales were lower than before but good.
"With the introduction of single households in the North East and then the talk of tiers, sales of real ale plummeted. Who wants to go to the pub with people they are seeing such a lot of already!
"As brewers have never been forced to close they do not automatically quality for grants and payments."
This was echoed by Martyn Stockley, co-owner of Errant micro-brewery in Newcastle, who said that more needs to be done for the hospitality industry's suppliers.
He said: "The brewing and hospitality industry have been affected more than any other industry over the last six months.
"We have seen our customer base shrink and shrink over the last four months without the majority of our customers.
"We're going into Tier 3 without customers and the level of support [from Government] hasn't been massive.
"We have had a hospitality grant and there is talk of a winter support grant but nothing has appeared yet.
"We market our beer to a national audience, we have customers in Manchester that we can't deliver to.
"This problem goes all the way up the supply chain, if small independent pubs aren't open they can't buy our beer, if we can't sell our beer we can't buy hops."
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The Chronicle’s Save Our Scene campaign hopes to highlight the dangers to the region’s famed nightlife businesses, and calling for more Government support to get them through the lockdown period.
