USA, CO: New Belgium opens new canning line

New Belgium announced on March, 6, its 16,000-square-foot canning line is complete and in full production, allowing the production of both 12-ounce and 16-ounce cans.

The brewery’s new system features a 40-head filler that can fill 360 cans-per-minute, compared to the previous canning line that filled 60 cans-per-minute.

“People are loving craft beer in a can so we decided to increase production to keep up with demand,” said Bryan Simpson, New Belgium spokesperson. “We first rolled out cans in 2008 as an outdoor-friendly, light for transport and readily recyclable vessel. Our fans enjoy that cans can travel to places where glass is not an option and now tallboys can come along, too.”

The canning line won’t change capacity, which is still at about 850,000 barrels a year, according to the brewery. Capacity is dictated, at this time, by cellaring operations, which have not changed.

At full build-out, the brewery projects it will be able to do 920,000 barrels a year.

The brewery remains the third largest craft brewery in the country — behind Boston Beer Co. and Sierra Nevada Brewing Co., according to the most recent statistics. It is the eighth largest brewery overall, and it still isn’t distributed to half the country.

New Belgium surpassed the “microbrewery” threshold in 1994 when it produced more than 15,000 barrels of beer a year with 75 percent or more of the beer being sold off site.

07 March, 2012