New Belgium Brewing Company will build a second brewery plant in Asheville, North Carolina with an annual output of 500,000 US bbl (587,000 hl) in order to expand its sales territory. Ziemann International GmbH, located in Ludwigsburg/Germany, has been awarded the contract for the supply and installation of all relevant production tanks in Asheville, including fermentation, storage, bright beer and yeast tanks.
New Belgium Brewing Company was founded in Fort Collins, Colorado in 1991. Currently, the brewery, with an annual output of more than 925,000 US bbl (1,086,000 hl), is the third largest craft brewery in the USA. Further growth shall be generated by expanding the company’s sales territory to the Northeastern coast of the USA. One key element of this strategy is the construction of the brewery plant in Asheville, which will provide New Belgium with a strategically located facility to supply east coast markets.
Project launch in 2015
New Belgium Brewing Company is Ziemann’s “oldest” customer among craft brewers. The first joint project was carried out in 2003. Since then, Ziemann has been ensuring the growth of the brewery by providing technological solutions and products. For example, Ziemann supplied tanks for the brewery plant in Fort Collins at the end of 2012 to allow for the expansion of the brewery’s capacity. The currently ordered tanks inclusive of catwalk system and fittings for the new brewery in Asheville will be supplied and installed at the beginning of 2015.
With the New Belgium Brewing Company’s Asheville order, Ziemann has again been able to impressively demonstrate its great competence in the field of craft brewing; a market which is just as multi-faceted as attractive. According to the “Brewers Association” the growth of the US craft brewing industry in 2012 was 15% by volume and 17% by dollars compared to the growth in 2011 of 13% by volume and 15% by dollars. Thus, the craft brewing sales share in the total US market in 2012 was 6.5% by volume and 10.2% by dollars. The success story is even more remarkable, looking at the individual breweries: in the 1970’s there existed only 89 breweries in the USA. Currently, there are a total of 2,403 breweries, of which 2,347 are brewpubs, microbreweries and regional craft breweries.
