West Berkshire Brewery to open £5m site by September
It has been a busy two weeks on the roads of Berkshire, as 28 lorries from Parma in Italy delivered more than £4m worth of state of the art brewing equipment, together with specially designed bottling, kegging and canning lines to the brewery’s new 36,000 ft2 premises in Yattendon.
The £5m purpose built facility is due to be fully operational by early September and will include a brand new brewery and packaging line – which will have the ability to run 5,000 bottles or 12,000 cans per hour.
Fourth expansion
The latest development comes after year-on-year growth for WBB, which is now on its fourth expansion after being founded in 1995 in the back of The Pot Kiln pub in Frilsham.
CEO of WBB, Simon Lewis, is particularly excited to see the building start to take shape.
“The contract packaging offer is an important part of the development plans for the business and we look forward to offering our new customers unrivalled quality, supreme flexibility and an excellent service when it comes to packaging their beer,” he said.
“Our move to the new site has been planned over the last two years and is now an imminent reality.
“The new brewery will bring together every aspect of our business to include the brewery and the amazing new packaging line and the site will be home to our stunning new shop with bar and café facilities.”
Contract packaging offer
The automated line will mean that WBB will now be able to offer contract packaging to other brewers on their “top of the range” kit, which is able to package into can, bottle, keg, and cask in volumes from 30HL to 210HL.
All bottle label configurations are available; front, back, wrap and neck, as well as a full-can wrap option.
WBB can then package beer into four different bottle varieties or three different can sizes, as well as being able to rack into keg or cask.
The production run can also be split, so that one brew can be packed into the four different formats as required.
