Expect more Voodoo Ranger beers to flood the market. New Belgium Brewing has struck an agreement to acquire the Daleville, Virginia-based production facility Constellation Brands built in 2017.
The 259,000 sq. ft. facility can produce beer, flavored malt beverages (FMBs) and spirits-based, ready-to-drink (RTD) canned cocktails. Bringing the Daleville facility online will add 125,000 barrels of beer capacity to New Belgium’s output within the next year, a New Belgium spokesperson told Brewbound.
With the added capacity, New Belgium plans to focus on Voodoo Ranger Juice Force IPA and “its high-velocity 2023 sequel Fruit Force IPA,” the company said in a press release.
New Belgium’s 2022 barrelage is anticipated to reach 1.2 million in 2022, New Belgium CEO Steve Fechheimer told Brewbound earlier this year. The brewery’s volume increased +11%, to 1,080,000 barrels in 2021, the most recent year for which data is available from the Brewers Association (BA).
The deal, for which financial details were not disclosed, is expected to close in early May. No brands are included in the transaction.
All 60 facility employees will be offered continued employment “at equal or greater pay than before,” New Belgium said in a press release.
“For a company growing as fast as New Belgium, there’s no challenge more urgent than boosting our ability to make enough beer to meet growing demand,” Fechheimer said in the release. “We’re excited to join the Daleville community, and we’re confident this facility and its local team will help us fuel our growth for the foreseeable future. We greatly appreciate the partnership we’ve seen from distributors and retailers over the past several months as we’ve worked to find a solution.”
New Belgium’s Voodoo Ranger family has propelled it to sky-high growth in recent years, and the company’s breweries in Fort Collins, Colorado, and Asheville, North Carolina, have begun to “approach the limits of our existing brewing capacity,” a New Belgium spokesperson told Brewbound.
In December, Reuters reported that Kirin was seeking additional brewing capacity in the U.S. for additional production of the Voodoo Ranger brands. “Our craft beer business in North America is on a roll,” CEO Yoshinori Isozaki told Reuters at the time.
In the first two months of 2023, New Belgium and sister brand Bell’s Brewery – both owned by the Lion Little World Beverages subsidiary of Japanese brewing giant Kirin – are the eighth largest beer category vendor in off-premise retailers tracked by market research firm Circana (formerly IRI). The breweries’ dollar sales have increased +14.9% and volume, measured in case sales, has increased +8.8%, compared to the first two months of 2022.
Much of that growth comes from New Belgium’s Voodoo Ranger family of IPAs, which includes six of the top 30 craft brands tracked by Circana.
New Belgium will contract produce some Constellation offerings at the facility, including the Fresca Mixed RTD line, as part of a “multi-year deal,” a spokesperson said. Contract brands other than Fresca Mixed were not disclosed.
“One of the keys to our success is bringing a focused and disciplined approach to our beer business, making key strategic pivots when the circumstances warrant it,” Constellation Beer Division president Jim Sabia said in the release. “We are pleased that New Belgium Brewing will be able to more fully optimize the Daleville facility’s footprint and are confident they will position the existing talented workforce for additional future success.”
Constellation Brands opened the $48 million facility in 2017 as an East Coast production hub for Ballast Point, which it owned at the time. In 2019, with Ballast Point production volume declining, it closed the site’s taproom. Months after that announcement, Constellation Brands – which counts Mexican imports Modelo, Constellation and Pacifico as its beer category bread and butter – sold Ballast Point to then little-known Kings & Convicts but maintained the Daleville facility to produce alternative alcoholic beverages as well as Two Lane Lager, which it produces in collaboration with country singer Luke Bryan.
New Belgium does not plan to operate a taproom at the brewery once it takes ownership.
Editor’s note: this story was updated at 1:30 p.m. ET on March 23 to reflect corrected barrelage information as provided by a spokesperson.