Molson Coors Beverage Company has announced a £25m investment in its Burton-upon-Trent brewery that includes a new hard seltzer canning line and upgrades to its beer and cider packaging facilities to drive efficiencies.
The new canning line will package the brewer’s 4% ABV hard seltzer brand Three Fold as well as support future innovation in the RTD and premium beers categories.
The investment follows the unveiling of a £5m campaign earlier this month to support the launch of Three Fold, the biggest brand investment the company has ever made into a new category.
Phil Whitehead, MD of Molson Coors in Western Europe, said: “The hard seltzer and RTD categories present a huge opportunity for growth. The RTD category is the fastest growing in alcohol globally and, while it’s early days, we’re seeing strong indications that hard seltzers will prove as popular in Western Europe as they have in the US.
“This investment will allow us to scale up at speed and help our customers to rapidly respond to that growing demand from consumers in this quickly emerging category.”
Work to install the new hard seltzer canning line will begin in late 2021 and the first cans are due to roll out in late spring 2022. Molson Coors will also upgrade its beer and cider packaging lines which will significantly improve efficiencies in its operations. This work will also begin later this year and is expected to be complete by early 2022.
The ongoing modernisation programme has seen Molson Coors invest more than £100m in its Burton brewery over the past decade. As part of this, the brewery has been self-sufficient in CO2 production since 2018, the equivalent of removing more than 2,300 tonnes of emissions from its operations, is zero-waste to landfill and is now powered with 100% renewable electricity, as are all of Molson Coors’ UK operations.
