After several amalgamations it moved its operations to Southwark (now part of Thebarton) and by 1920 it was South Australia's largest brewing company.
In January 1860 fire destroyed the malthouse, which had been leased to Richard Goss (died 1869), who sold malt to Simms as well as to Thomson.
In 1854 Thomson relinquished his share of the business[11] and in October left the partnership to White & Phillips[12] who shortly went bankrupt.
In 1889 the brewery was taken over and run as a co-operative by a consortium of four "free" hotel owners: Robert Hyman, John Selby Cocker, Samuel Harris, and Vincent Henry Simpson.
He left the Co-operative in 1895 to manage the East Adelaide Brewery, a two-storey establishment which the newly revived E. Clark & Co. built on the south side of the River Torrens, on Walkerville Road (now Stephen Terrace).
By 1898 the East Adelaide Brewery was contracted to supply fifty "free houses", and once again a doubling of capacity was deemed necessary to keep up with demand.
[45] The old Walkerville Brewery was taken over by its erstwhile head brewer Charles Williams in 1901[46] and operated successfully as "Williams' Walkerville Brewery", with outlets at the Tea Tree Gully Hotel[47] and perhaps a few others not tied to either of the two combines, no doubt to the chagrin of the Co-operative, which bought out the company in 1906.
The Walkerville Co-Operative Brewing Co. continued its growth and by the end of World War I was the largest brewery in South Australia.
Directors were Charles Boxer Ware, Frederick James Blades, Vincent Henry Simpson, and William Walter Warren.
The installation of the new equipment required the construction of additional buildings to accommodate it, with beer production using the new system beginning in late 1927.
[citation needed]) Nathan Bitter, thee first beer brewed using the new process, was immediately popular, and was marketed around the whole country.
The Walkerville Brewhouse Tower at 107 Port Road was provisionally added to the South Australian Heritage Register on 20 May 2021.
The introduction of brewhouse towers in the late nineteenth century enabled brewers to implement the gravitational method of brewing and were once a key element of the larger South Australian breweries.
The consolidation and closure of many breweries in the twentieth century and the adoption of newer methods of brewing have led to these structures becoming uncommon.
The Walkerville Co-operative Brewing Company was SABCo's biggest competitor and the other major South Australian brewer during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.