Molson Coors Beverage Co. is set to invest more than £100m ($125m) in its UK production network over the next five years.
The Carling owner’s investment will go into its three breweries in the UK and Ireland, as well as a cider press in Suffolk.
The group’s two breweries in Burton-on-Trent and Tadcaster will receive “investments to improve brewing capacity and packaging capability”, according to a statement.
The Burton brewery will see a 24-tonne 120,000 cans per hour filler installed, while the Tadcaster brewery and Aspall Cyder house will gain upgrades to packaging keg lines.
Fraser Thomson, the chief supply chain officer for Molson Coors’ business in western Europe, said: “This plan is an investment in our future, giving our people and our brands the tools to fulfil our potential in the UK market while making strong progress against our sustainability targets.
“As a business, we have continued to invest in the UK throughout the challenges caused by the pandemic and this further investment underscores our long-term commitment to the UK and the local communities where we operate.”
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By GlobalDataThe planned investment follows on from the £13m project to increase capacity at the Aspall Cyder house, which concluded in 2022. A year earlier, Molson Coors set out £21m investment in a new canning line at the Burton site. The company is also partway through a £10m investment at its Tadcaster brewery, work that began last October.
Molson Coors attributed the need for additional capacity to the rise in popularity of Madri Excepcional, a European-style lager brewed in Tadcaster.
“This is a landmark moment in our history as we evolve to meet the demands of our growing portfolio and bring new innovations in the years ahead, while continuing to reduce the impact our business has on the environment,” Thomson added.
Molson Coors does not disclose sales figures for individual markets. However, when the company reported its 2023 financial results in February, it did point to “lower consumption in the UK” as a reason for a 3% fall in “financial volumes” in the final quarter of 2023.
President and CEO Gavin Hattersley said: “We’ve had two slower quarters from an overall industry point of view for Q3 and Q4. Q3 was largely weather-driven. Q4 was largely off-premise driven and there was a fairly substantial excise increase in the off-premise of around 10% in the UK. Of course, that probably had somewhat of a negative effect in the fourth quarter but the UK consumer has remained remarkably resilient and our expectation is that will continue.”
He described Madri as “the fastest-growing major beer brand in the UK, both by volume and value sales” in the fourth quarter of the year. “Madri’s volumes grew by 80% for the full year, easily surpassing 1m hectoliters,” Hattersley said.
