Jun 4, 2006 11:49 pm US/Mountain
New Belgium Brewing Company To Expand
FORT COLLINS, Colo. (CBS4) ―
Colorado is known for its many micro breweries making craft-brewed beers, and success is prompting a major expansion at one of the state's best known craft breweries.
New Belgium Brewery's sales grew by 12 percent last year. New Belgium's following continues to grow thanks largely in part to their popular beer "Fat Tire."
The current bottling line at the brewery is small compared to the breweries that make the most popular national beers, and in an effort to meet demand brewery officials are planning a $21 million expansion.
The project would extend New Belgium's distribution into the Chicago and San Diego areas. It will include an expanded brewery and faster bottling line.
Right now, New Belgium's line cranks out 300 bottles of beer each minute. After the expansion, that will increase to 700 a minute.
Jim Spencer, the engineer in charge of the expansion, said an extra challenge is to expand the operations without compromising the environmental ethic of a brewery that buys all of it's power from wind farms.
"A lot of the details of this building were built around the New Belgium culture of building sustainably and in a green manner," Spencer said.
Construction begins next month. It will be about a year before the new line is ready to supply the Colorado brew to more fans across the country.
The company said it's the "Colorado mystique" which makes craft beers like Fat Tire much more than just something to drink.
"It can evoke pieces of travel; it can evoke stories," Bryan Simpson of the New Belgium Brewing Company said. "It can be something much more than a consumable product. I think that's where the mystique lies in these outlying markets."
New Belgium officials told CBS4 that last year the craft beer industry grew by 7 percent nationally.
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