E-Malt.com News article: The Czech Republic: Equipment producer can’t handle all orders from booming microbrewing sector

Czechs are fiercely proud of their beer, and especially of the fast-growing range of varieties available from the explosion of independent craft and micro-breweries established in recent years in both Prague and the country’s many spa and historic towns, as an FT special report shows.

Indeed, the boom in innovative, independent brewing is being felt well outside the tourist-packed streets of old town Prague and Cesky Krumlov.

Sixty miles to the south-east of the Czech capital is Pacov, a small town in rolling hills that fails to make the tourist radar screen. But a factory on its southern fringes knows all about the current rage among restaurateurs for making hoppy Czech ales on site.

“We can’t handle all the orders,” says Martin Hajek, vice-chairman of Pacovske Strojirny (Pacov Engineering), with sells micro-brewery equipment. “Where we used to do two to three micro-breweries a year, we now do six to seven and we anticipate doubling this.”

Pacovske Strojirny’s slick brochures list some 50 domestic clients, ranging from safe and dependable names such as Staropramen and Krusovice, to the more reverential Hop and Beer Temple of Zatec and the exotic First Beer Spa of Roznov pod Radhostem.

Since its acquisition 18 months ago by the Safichem Group, a Swiss-registered holding company, owned by Czech industrialist Tomas Plachy, the plant almost doubled turnover to near Kc 400 mln expected this year and has upped its headcount from 190 to 230.

This is all good news for Pacov, whose population of 5,000 has watched the demise of its leather industry, its other former main job provider, since the collapse of communism.

“We’re easily the biggest employer in the area,” says Josef Kalivoda, technical manager at Pacov with 38 years of service. “The blue collar workers are mainly from here, but we attract management and technical staff from up to 30 kilometres distant.”

The key to the expansion is high-quality, traditional Czech craftsmanship. “Our equipment will be working well after 20 years,” Hajek says. Sometimes installation presents a logistical challenge because of limited access to the premises, as at the ‘U Tri ruzi’ in Prague, where the largest vessels were winched down from a helicopter.

“Every micro-brewery must be tailor-made to client’s needs,” says Hajek, and each project can last between four and five months, half of which is design and planning.

For now, 60 per cent of production is for the Czech market, but keen to capitalise on expanding demand for bespoke breweries around the world, Pacovske Strojirny is working to expand exports. Indeed, the unit being readied for factory testing at the plant last month was bound for Poland, just to the north.

Other important markets include nearby Russia, Germany and Slovakia, but the plant has won orders from as far afield as the USA, Japan, South Korea and the Philippines.

The Czech brand is an important element in securing such business, says Hajek: “It’s a good reference. Czech beer, and its beer equipment, is well known, it has a good image.”

Eager to ease both the log-jam at the Pacov plant and expand further globally, Safichem acquired ZVU, a much larger producer of brewery and food processing equipment, in August. Located in Hradec Kralove to the east of Prague, ZVU employs 500 people and takes the combined brewing and food industry sales of the Safichem Group to about Kc 1 bln (€37 mln).

But, somewhat neglected in the recent past, Hayek says it needs more care than Pacovske Strojirny. “At Pacov, when you go in, you can feel it,” he says. “It has energy, everyone there knows what to do.”


10 October, 2014