Vietnam: Krones AG laying the foundation stone for a new brewery in Ho Chi Minh-City

Krones AG, Neutraubling, Germany, announced on March 2 it is taking responsibility to build complete brewery for Sabeco in Saigon.

It’s the first time that Krones AG, Neutraubling, Germany, the globally operating manufacturer of bottling and packaging machinery, has also tackled construction work on such a large scale for one of its clients. Early this year, Vietnam’s leading brewery, Saigon Beer, Alcohol and Beverages (Sabeco), began construction of its biggest brewery, in the Cu Chi industrial zone of Ho Chi Minh City.

For around 120 million US dollars, it is building here a brewery dimensioned for an initial capacity of 1 million hl, which is scheduled to start operation within a mere 17 months, by mid-2007. The first filled bottle of beer will be leaving the brewery in May 2007. Krones bears overall responsibility for the entire construction work and the equipment as well. A quintessentially turnkey project.

Krones has thus taken fully on board the EPC (engineering, procurement, construction) idea, which subsumes the construction of the building, the entire engineering and the organisation of all subsuppliers. Krones is the main contractor, handling overall project management, with ultimate responsibility for both equipment and the construction work. The job package covers the buildings and the outdoor installation for the entire brewery, together with the bottling operation. This also includes process buildings, tank farm, bottling hall, water treatment, office building, canteen, landscaping, etc. Krones is here being supported by can-do partners in the shape of the Vietnamese branch of a Dutch firm of architects, and a Vietnamese construction company. When it comes to the technical equipment, Krones is, for example, supplying the entire process technology involved, with a 1000- hl/h brewhouse and two returnable-glass bottling lines, each rated at 30,000 bph.

The state-owned Sabeco Brewery, which already operates a facility in the centre of Ho Chi Minh City, and several other breweries around the country, accounts for about 30 % of the domestic beer market, with an annual output of around 5 million hl. 329 breweries are currently producing 17 million hl of beer per annum in Vietnam. The Vietnamese Ministry of Industry is forecasting a rise to 25 million hl in 2010, which corresponds to a per capita consumption of approximately 25 litres. So by 2008 Sabeco is aiming to double the production capacities at its brewery in Cu Chi.

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