20 June 2008 - Today a festive ceremony was held in Voronezh to mark the completion of a large-scale project of Baltika Breweries — the doubling of production capacity at the Baltika-Voronezh brewery. The capacity has been raised from one to two million hectolitres of products per year.
Anton Artemiev, President of Baltika Breweries, commented as follows: ‘Not long ago, at the end of May — we opened Baltika’s eleventh brewery facility in Novosibirsk. Today yet another strategically important project for our company has been completed — the doubling of production capacity at the Baltika-Voronezh brewery. These are our main projects for 2008.’
The decision to double the capacity of the Voronezh brewery was taken in July 2007. The main goal of the project was to increase the production volume of the most popular product varieties so as to satisfy demand in Russia’s Central Region.
In the context of implementing this project, the fermentation section of the brewery was expanded, 16 new cylindrical-conical tanks, 4 new fermentation tanks were installed, and a new filling line for glass bottles with capacity of 50,000 bottles per hour and a new filtration line were launched. A new warehouse for finished goods and an area for storing packaging materials were built as well.
In order to ensure top quality of all production leaving the brewery, only the most up-to-date equipment from the world’s leading manufacturers has been installed in the Baltika-Voronezh facility — Ziemann, Krones and Pall.
Thanks to the new equipment, the Baltika-Voronezh brewery can now produce additional beer varieties such as the national brands Baltika №3 Classic, Baltika Cooler and Baltika №7 Export beer. The brewery also produces such core Company beer varieties as Arsenalnoye and Yarpivo.
Around 23 million Euros were invested in the project to double the production capacity: 18.5 million Euros were spent directly on modernising and reconstructing the production sections; 4.5 million Euros went into building a new warehouse for finished goods and the area for storing packaging materials.
The project to double the production capacity of the Baltika-Voronezh brewery is important not only for the Company itself, but for the region as a whole. It was included in the programme for investment development of the Voronezh Region. Following completion of the project, the Company will be paying into the Treasury of the region a further amount of more than 300 million rubles per year. In this connection, it bears mention that the tax payments of this subsidiary to the Treasuries of the city of Voronezh and the Voronezh region in 2007 were greater than 390 million rubles.
The increase in production capacity at the Baltika-Voronezh brewery has created an additional 60 jobs for residents of the region. In addition, during implementation of the project, more than 200 additional jobs appeared for the subcontractors.
Dmitry Vizir, Director of the Baltika-Voronezh subsidiary, had this to say: ‘The commissioning of the new capacity at the brewery is the result of the effective joint work of the Company’s employees and of our partners, the contractors, who helped us complete the project within tight time-lines. We especially should mention the large contribution to the implementation of the project made by our partners in the Administration of Voronezh Region and the town council of the Sovietsky District of the city of Voronezh. Their support was always active and timely.’