Coors Pops Open A New Place
$300 Million Brewery Gets Going In Elkton
The $300 million facility is the company’s first new brewery in more than a century and will bring the Colorado-based company closer to East Coast consumers.
Locating the brewery in Elkton was an easy decision, said Peter Coors, vice chairman of Molson Coors and chairman of Coors Brewing Co.
“From a logistics standpoint, it was important to be on the East Coast,” Coors said. “We have the infrastructure here and we’ve been thinking about this for a long time.”
About 500 people attended Wednesday’s ribbon-cutting ceremony, which included an opportunity to tour the facility.
The Process
The new brewery will produce Coors Light and Keystone Light for markets in the eastern United States and for export to more than 30 countries.
Coors Shenandoah Brewery will continue to bottle Killian’s Irish Red, which is brewed in Golden, Colo., and shipped in bulk to Elkton for packaging and distribution.
The company broke ground on the new brewery in April 2005.
The 100,000-square-foot facility houses two brew lines, fermentation and aging equipment, grain handling equipment and controls.
The brewery will operate around-the-clock and has a high level of automation, according to Brewmaster Andy Pickerell.
The brewers’ primary role is to test various parts of the process, he explained.
“The software does the brewing,” Pickerell said. “We’re checking to see that the brewing is done correctly.”
Commissioning
The plant is also more environmentally friendly, Pickerell added.
Carbon dioxide, a byproduct of the fermentation process, is collected and reused. It provides the bubbles in beer.
“So we have no carbon dioxide emissions from the plant,” Pickerell said.
The brewery produced its first beer in March, but required “a lot of commissioning work” to bring it to capacity of 12,000 barrels a day, he added.
“First we get the brewery to operate properly, then we fine-tune it so we can make extremely consistent beer,” Pickerell said. “We have another three to four months before we’ve really optimized the process.”
The new operation will save Coors on distribution costs, said company spokeswoman Aimee Valdez.
The company estimated annual savings of about $25 million through reduced freight costs and improved efficiency.
Coors Shenandoah opened in 1987 as a blending, finishing, packaging and distribution facility.
The plant employs 450 people and will produce 7 million barrels of beer annually, with the potential to produce 10 million barrels.
Contact Dan Wright at 574-6293 or dwright@dnronline.com