Every site in Molson Coors’ UK network is to benefit from the £100 million investment pot that the brewery and beverage giant plans to spend over the next five years.
Citing the continued strong performance of its brands, and in particular strong growth in its premium and world lager brands, the company sees the need for a programme of infrastructure upgrades to ‘improve capabilities and introduce greater efficiencies’, while also supporting its commitment to reach carbon net zero in its direct emissions in the UK by 2035.
To those ends, the plan will involve improvements to brewing capacity and packaging capability at the Burton-on-Trent and Tadcaster breweries, including the installation of a brand new 24-tonne high-speed 120,000 cans per hour filler at Burton, and upgrades to the packaging Keg line at both Tadcaster Brewery and Aspall Cyder House.
There will also be investment in the Sharp’s Brewery in Rock, Cornwall, to support new and existing cask ale brands such as Doom Bar, Solar Wave Hazy and Twin Coast.
This cash injection follows on from the £13m spent increasing capacity at the Aspall Cyder House, which concluded in 2022, a £21m investment in a new canning line in Burton in 2021, and an ongoing £10m investment in its Tadcaster brewery which began at the end of last year.
Chief supply chain officer for Western Europe, Fraser Thomson, 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,” said Thomson.
“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.”
In 2021, Molson Coors became the first major UK brewer to switch to 100% renewable electricity, with all the electricity used to produce the more than one billion pints that it makes each year in the UK coming from 22 wind turbines at the Tween Bridge wind farm in South Yorkshire, less than 40 miles from the Tadcaster Brewery.
There has also been a successful carbon recovery project at its largest UK brewery in Burton, which has been almost entirely self-sufficient in CO2 production since 2018, and a new carbon recovery and reuse plant installation at its Tadcaster Brewery.
