New Belgium Brewing isn’t quite ready to break ground at its new Asheville, N.C. brewery location, so it has continued expanding operations at its home base.
The country’s third largest craft brewery announced today that it is nearing completion on a 140,000 barrel expansion project at its Fort Collins, Colo. brewery location. The build out includes the addition of 400 metric tons of malt capacity, four 2,200 hectoliter bright beer tanks, twelve 2,200 hectoliter fermentation vessel and 32 new oaken foeders for wood beer conditioning. The company also expanded its water treatment facility and added new filtration capacity.
The expansion will allow the company to sustain current growth trends until its second production facility comes online in 2015.
“This gives us the ability to grow brands in existing markets while adding additional territories through 2015,” New Belgium Brewing Sales Director Joe Menetre said in a company release. “We’ll be in 31 states plus DC this summer, so we’ve got a lot of potential geography out there still. We’re excited about opening the Asheville brewery and this will get us there while meeting demand.”
Part of that demand will come from Florida. In February, New Belgium spokesman Bryan Simpson told Brewbound.com that the company would begin distributing its beer in the Sunshine State later this year.
“Florida is a great craft beer market,” Simpson said told Brewbound. “It was the right market for the amount of volume and capacity the brewery is able to handle this year.”
Although it’s unclear when the brewery will begin distributing in Florida, New Belgium opened two new markets – Alaska and Louisiana – in mid-March.