E-Malt.com News article: Australia: Coopers Begins Christmas build-up with new warehouse opening

Coopers Brewery begins its Christmas build-up next week and plans to have a record one million cartons of beer in its new warehouse to meet anticipated demand this Christmas, the company reported in its press release, October 15.

The company will complete construction of its 7000 square metre warehouse extension at its Regency Park brewery next Monday (October 15), which will coincide with the full commissioning of a new high-speed bottle labeler and the start of a second shift as Coopers heads into its busiest period of the year.

Coopers Managing Director, Dr Tim Cooper, said the new warehouse and labeler were part of a $10.5 million capital expenditure program that commenced in April this year.

“Christmas is traditionally our busiest period and in recent years our storage capacity has been bursting at the seams,” he said.

“It was well and truly time to invest in extra storage space to support our continued growth.” Dr Cooper said a total of $6 million had been spent adding a further 7000 square metres of warehouse storage space plus new office accommodation.

The warehouse extension was the second since 2001 when Coopers moved from its old Leabrook site and gives the brewery a total of 20,000 square metres of storage.

“That’s enough space to stack about 1.4 million cartons of Coopers beer at any one time, which should give us enough capacity to carry us through the next few years” Dr Cooper said. To put the figure in perspective, 1.4 million beer cartons laid end-to-end would be about 560 kilometres long – about three quarters of the distance from Adelaide to Melbourne, one of Coopers fastest growing markets.

In the 12 months to June 30 this year, Coopers sales in Victoria rose by 24.3% while Australiawide sales grew by 7.4% in a highly competitive market. Exports grew by 35%. Dr Cooper said much of the national and international success has been driven by the company’s best-selling brew, Coopers Pale Ale.

He said the $10.5 million capital expenditure program was part of Coopers’ overall strategy to grow its share of the national beer market from 3% to 5% by 2011.

In addition to the $6 million invested in warehousing and office accommodation, a further $4.5 million has been spent on two new beer fermenters installed in August, a high speed labeling machine and the purchase of 8500 kegs.

The new labeler has allowed Coopers to increase the speed of its bottling line to 1200 bottles a minute, making it the fastest single bottling line in Australia.

“With extra warehouse and office space, new fermenters in place, more beer kegs and the installation of a new high-speed labeler, 2008 is shaping up to be another solid year for Coopers,” Dr Cooper said.


17 October, 2007