Ziemann Holvrieka opens new branch in the U.S., installs beer brainiac as sales leader

Ziemann Holvrieka GmbH is now operating from three sites in North and South America: Miami, the Columbian capital of Bogota and now, just announced, San Diego. Beer brainiac Ralph Schneller-Reindell has just been promoted to head the USA, Canadian and Latin American sales regions from said San Diego office, in his capacity as vice president of sales. At our first Craft Brewers Conference, Schneller-Reindell was kind enough to give the newbies at CBB some quality interview time. From our previous story:

CBB: Tell us a little bit about Ziemann, your rich history and your interest in the craft brewing industry today.

Schneller-Reindell: Ziemann is a 160-year-old company. In our original history, we built brewhouses out of copper. In 1988, we bought Helmut Bauer — a tank builder. In subsequent years, we transformed into a company that’s specialized in complete breweries. We help build breweries all over the world — some of the biggest breweries in the world. Since the craft brewing market has been growing in the last 10 years, we decided to focus on that since generally issues are the same with complete brewhouses. Last year [2012], we sold more than 170 tanks in the U.S. We developed as one of our products the Cascade model – a modular brewhouse starting with a three-vessel brewhouse and being able to be upgraded to a four- or five-vessel brewhouse. That’s basically the way we’re going into this market. We got all of our contacts out of the tank business and tried to use our experience in the long-term history of Ziemann and our worldwide experience with all kinds of brewing issues — from temperatures to earthquakes, whatever — and helping craft brewers out of these issues.

CBB: Why should these craft brewers here choose Ziemann? What do you offer that other brewing manufacturers do not?

Schneller-Reindell: I think at the moment we have the most innovative package for a brewhouse. We have a new agitator. We have a new boiling system. We have a new lauter tun system. We’re the only manufacturer and supplier on the market that could either use a lauter tun or a mash filter. The mash filter is not very common in the craft brewing scene, but nevertheless we have it in our portfolio. We also have our energy system, so we have a lot of innovations right now. And so you know, we do 50-barrel [bbl] brewhouses and upwards. A brewery that is targeting a 100,000 bbl system that can be done with us. If the brewery is going to a final production of 30,000 bbl, we’re probably not the right partner. Not at the moment at least.

Read the rest of the Q&A over here. We’re also excited to see Schneller-Reindell supported by the Sales Director Udo Funk, who will also be based in the USA, as well as by the native Columbian David Rueda, who has been boosting the sales of this tradition-rich company as sales manager for Latin America from Bogota since earlier this year.