New Belgium Brewing announces Asheville brewing equipment partners

A photo from the New Belgium Brewing Co.’s beautiful brewhouse in Fort Collins, Colo.

Much of New Belgium Brewing Co.’s future growth will likely come from its upcoming Asheville, N.C., brewery, aimed at the East Coast market and beyond. The planned 400,000-bbl brewery and packaging facility will provide New Belgium with additional capacity and allow the Colorado-based brewer to expand into new areas of distribution. Upon completion in 2015, the facility will initially create 50 new jobs in the Asheville area with more than 100 positions expected at full build-out.

Those employees will be working with some pretty impressive brewing equipment. Last week, New Belgium announced the list of vendors scheduled to supply the brewing process and packaging equipment for its Asheville facility. Brewhouse, cold block, filtration and finishing systems will come from GEA Brewery Systems GmbH. All fermentation and storage vessels will come from Ziemann International GmbH. Kuenzel Maschinenbau GmbH will supply the malt storage and handling systems. Albert Handtmann Armaturenfabrik & Co GmbH will supply the process equipment for fermentation and yeast cellars. The bottle line will be supplied by KHS-USA.

“It was a difficult decision with so many qualified suppliers so we went with those who could best fulfill our needs, and we couldn’t be more excited about where we’ve landed,” said New Belgium Technical Director Jim Spencer. “Every one of these contractors has years of experience designing world-class brewing systems and we are fortunate to be able to tap into their deep reserves of talent and knowledge.”

New Belgium is currently working to rehabilitate the Brownfield site where it will locate its second brewing facility in Asheville, North Carolina. All projections show the brewery coming online in early 2015.