For the first time in decades, the craft beer market isn’t booming.

Independent breweries had sprouted year after year, often finding customers eager for more. But last year, more craft breweries closed than opened, bucking a 20-year trend.

Against that backdrop, Maryland’s Heavy Seas Beer announced it is teaming up with three other breweries to streamline operations. The Halethorpe brewery is Maryland’s largest and will soon celebrate its 30th anniversary.

B3 Beverage Co. — an existing collaboration between Yards Brewing and Bald Birds Brewing, both in Pennsylvania, and Two Roads Brewing in Connecticut — has acquired Heavy Seas.

The structure is more like a strategic partnership, though, Heavy Seas said. Each brewery maintains its individuality.

Beers like Loose Cannon will keep their Heavy Seas recipe and branding, but joining forces offers advantages, according to Heavy Seas founder Hugh Sisson.

“The craft beer and beverage industry is at an inflection point. By combining resources, we create efficiency, scale, and reach that would be difficult for any one brewery to achieve on its own,” he said in a statement.

Sisson, who has been dubbed the “godfather of Baltimore craft beer,” sought to change state law in the 1980s to permit brewpubs, per the company’s website. He was successful, and his family’s restaurant, Sisson’s, began brewing its own beer and became the state’s first brewpub in 1989.

He then started Clipper City Brewing, which later rebranded as Heavy Seas, in 1995. During the 2024 fiscal year, it brewed 25,000 barrels of beer, more than double any other Maryland brewer, according to state data.

But that annual total has dropped each year since the COVID-19 pandemic. And nationally, craft breweries saw a 4% decline in production last year, according to the Brewers Association, a trade group. Roughly 100 more breweries closed than opened during the year in what has, after years of growth, become a saturated market.

To withstand economic challenges, some breweries are teaming up. Heavy Seas said its partnership with B3 Beverage will enable it to expand production and distribution.

“This partnership gives each brand the ability to thrive while staying true to its roots,” Sisson said. “It’s a way to face future challenges together — stronger, smarter, and more sustainable.”

Heavy Seas said it will consider new products, such as nonalcoholic options. Sisson will step back from his day-to-day leadership, passing the torch to the “next generation,” which includes Caroline Sisson, his daughter, the brewery’s marketing director.

“This partnership is designed to preserve each brand’s individuality and presence in its core markets,” she wrote in an email, “while joining forces collectively where it makes sense from an efficiency standpoint, including production, sales, distribution, and marketing capabilities.”