E-Malt.com News article: 3011

Australia's third-largest brewer, Coopers Brewery, has started a A$7 million (US$8 million) expansion program to meet increasing demand. The company is to to boost capacity at its Regency Park brewery in Adelaide. The South Australia-based company said the expansion would include new fermenters and yeast tanks at its Regency Park brewery in Adelaide, The New Zealand Herald posted on July 27. “The program includes a major warehouse extension, the addition of two new fermenters and two new yeast tanks, the purchase of another 12,000 kegs and the acquisition of a new can seamer and a new keg filling line,” the company reported in a statement.

Managing Director, Dr Tim Cooper, said the capital work was necessary because of Cooper’s continued sales growth since moving to Regency Park. “In the past 12 month, Coopers beer sales nationally rose by 16.4%, with sales of kegged beers in the eastern States up by almost 55%,” he said. “As a result, we have had to increase our production capacity by a similar amount to feel comfortable about meeting strong demand again next year.” Dr Cooper said work on the $3 million warehouse expansion had already commenced with steelwork now being erected. “We will be boosting the size of the warehouse by about 33%, with work expected to be completed early in October,” he said.

Dr Cooper said that two additional 1700 hectolitre (170,000 litres) fermenters would be installed this month at a total cost of about $800,000, while two new yeast tanks were being installed at a cost of about $200,000. An additional 12,000 kegs, costing about $1.5 million, had been ordered from Belgium and were expected to arrive next month. “The new fermenters will increase our production capacity by about 20%, while the new kegs represent a 25% rise in our total keg numbers, which should see us through until next year when we’ll have to review the situation,” he said.

“A new Ferrum seamer from Switzerland has now arrived which will allow us to boost production of canned beers, while the new keg filler doubles our capacity to about 120 kegs an hour.” Dr Cooper said in the three years Coopers had been at Regency Park, the volume of beer produced at the brewery had risen 38.7% while extracts had increased 9.8%. Dr Cooper said that sales had been boosted by the success of distributor Premium Beverages, a joint venture between Coopers and American Beverage Distributors Pty Ltd, which holds the licence to distribute Budweiser in Australia. Premium Beverages handles the national distribution of Coopers’ beer products outside South Australia and the Northern Territory.


28 July, 2004