Stone Brewing partners with MicroStar Logistics to enable growth, shrink carbon footprint

As Stone Brewing, a top-10 craft brewer, prepares for continued rapid expansion with the construction of a new, $74 million East Coast brewery, it has extended its long-standing partnership with MicroStar Logistics. MicroStar’s keg management and keg quality services deliver the efficiency and flexibility Stone Brewing needs in today’s rapidly changing beer landscape, the company stated in its press release.

Brewers go through lots of kegs. The smart ones, like Stone Brewing Co., look for logistics partners to make the process manageable.

“MicroStar has been with us since the beginning and never let us down. By providing just-in-time keg deliveries, MicroStar has been integral to our growth,” said Stone‘s Co-Founder and President, Steve Wagner. “MicroStar also shares our deep commitment to sustainability. Their model decreases the miles our empty kegs travel and reduces our carbon footprint. Also, given their recent creation of MicroStar Quality Services, it is clear they are committed to maintaining the highest quality fleet and extending the life of the industry’s most sustainable container: the stainless steel keg.”

“Stone’s relentless commitment to quality and innovation has earned them fanatical customer loyalty and torrid growth,” says MicroStar President and CEO Michael Hranicka. “We are proud to be aligned with such highly-respected, genuinely good people and look forward to a long future together. Our logistics solutions are perfectly designed to manage their increasingly sophisticated needs … allowing Stone to focus on brewing more award-winning beer.”

Since joining the MicroStar program 15 years ago, Stone has grown by leaps and bounds. For every stage of growth, MicroStar’s ability to deliver the kegs needed without the worries that come with keg ownership will be a valuable tool as Stone manages its growth in the coming years.

MicroStar takes responsibility for repair and maintenance and eliminates the risk of loss or potential slow turns. By choosing MicroStar instead of owning their own kegs, Stone has also reduced its carbon footprint by over 400,000 kg of CO2e in 2014 alone, based on an analysis by Dr. John Heckman of thinkstep, Inc. That is equivalent to saving the amount of CO2e emitted by burning over 450,000 pounds of coal.