South Africa: Country’s oldest commercial brewer in R39m expansion

Newlands Brewery, based in Cape Town, which is the oldest commercial brewery in South Africa, has embarked on a R39-million expansion plan, South Africa media communicated on November 18.

The South African Breweries’ Newlands Brewery is the cradle of clear-beer brewing in South Africa. The first brewery on the Lies-beeck river was established in 1658 by Pieter Visagie. The current Newlands Brewery dates back to the mid-1800s when Jacob Letterstedt built the Mariendahl brewery. After his death, a fellow Swede, Anders Ohlsson, bought the premises and the rest is history.

Diarmaid de Burca, the brewery’s general manager, explains that Newlands is proud to retain its link with its past and is one of the oldest industrial sites in the Western Cape as it was granted National Heritage status in October 1995.

However, the brewery is not just about history and, while celebrating its roots, it is con-stantly improving its brewing techniques and operates sophisti-cated technology, all of which can be seen on SAB’s specialised brewery tours. Newlands is also undergoing a process of growth as part of SAB’s national R5-billion capacity and capability expansion of its operations. Six new storage vessels, each with a capacity of 2 600 hl, will be in place by July 2006, as well as two new bright-beer tanks with a capacity of 2 400 hl each which will be installed by December this year. This investment will allow Newlands to extend its pro-duction by 4 000 hl a week, taking its weekly total to 93 000 hl. The increased production will not affect the environment or the brewery’s neighbours as precautions regarding air, water and noise pollution have been taken. For example, its water, elec- tricity and steam use are con-tinuously monitored and tightly controlled to reduce their environmental impact. The use of glycol as a chilling agent for the brewery’s bright-beer tanks has enabled Newlands to further reduce its use of ammonia.

An electrode boiler has replaced the old coal-fired boiler, reducing emissions. All brewery fridges have been modified to make them more energy efficient. All brewery trucks have had standard suspensions replaced with air suspensions and dampeners. Braking systems have been enhanced to eliminate air-brake noise, and the trailers have all been light weighted to reduce their impact on residential roads. An anaerobic wastewater plant has been installed which processes wastewater before it goes to the municipality.

Earlier this year, the brewery was named the best-performing SAB brewery at the company’s manufacturing conference. Newlands brews 11 beers, including Castle Lager, Castle Milk Stout, Castle Lite, Castle Draught, Amstel Lager, Amstel Draught, Carling Black Label, Hansa Pilsener, Hansa Draught, Redd’s Cold Filtered and Redd’s Dry. Last year nearly 4-million hectolitres of beer were packaged. “Our greatest success last year was to cooperate across the brewery value chain so that we were all chasing a similar objective, namely, increasing our throughput capacity over peak,” says De Burca.

“Brewing, packaging, ware-house logistics and all the support services worked towards the same goal and supported each other. “Looking forward, we intend to sustain last year’s excellent performance and seek ways of further improving our capacity to take Newlands to new heights,” concludes De Burca.

E-malt.com, la fuente de información global para los profesionales de la industria cervecera y de malteado. Los boletines quincenales de E-malt.com incluyen las últimas noticias de la industria, estadísticas en gráficos y tablas, precios mundiales de cebada y malta, y otra información relevante. Haga clic aquí para obtener acceso completo a E-malt.com. Si usted es un cliente de Castle Malting, puede obtener acceso gratuito al sitio web y publicaciones de E-malt.com. Contáctenos para obtener más información en marketing@castlemalting.com.