E-Malt.com News article: US, MS: Lazy Magnolia Brewing obtaining a 740,000 loan for future expansion

Kiln-based Lazy Magnolia Brewing, a microbrewery that started with a Christmas homebrew kit and saw its first year swamped by Hurricane Katrina, is getting a $740,000 interest-free expansion loan from the U.S. Department of Agriculture that will let it quintuple production over the next four years, clarionledger.com reported on July, 23.

It's part of Mark and Leslie Hendersons' $3 million plan to boost brewing capacity at Lazy Magnolia Brewing Co., the company that it will never make a "light" or non-alcoholic beer because "this is the south y'all" from 10,000 31-gallon barrels a year to 50,000 barrels by the end of 2015.

"We started life with a 15-barrel brewery a very small machine, typically for brewpubs," Mark Henderson said. "Over the years we've patched it, added on, advanced it so we can brew six times a day on a system designed to do one brew a week."

He expects to make nearly 15,000 barrels this year, but that's the current system's limit. The loan and about $100,000 in company money will get a system with about four times the capacity.

The plan also calls for more than doubling Lazy Magnolia's building and almost tripling employment, from 16 to nearly 50, Henderson said. The company now has distributors in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Tennessee, Florida and Georgia, and plans to move into Texas and the Carolinas by next summer.


27 July, 2011