New VBL bottling line comes online
By Quoc Hung - The Saigon Times Daily
HCMC - VBL Danang Limited, a subsidiary of the VBL Group, late last week commissioned a new bottling line at its brewery in the central city of Danang to meet surging beer demand.
Nguyen Nhat Minh, director VBL Group, said the commissioning of this high-speed bottling line was part of the phase 2, step 1 expansion project to increase capacity from 525,000 hectoliters to 750,000 hectoliters a year.
The new bottling line will enable the VBL Danang to double the bottling capacity and improve production efficiency.
“This milestone reflects our continued progress and commitment to rapidly grow the Larue brand to become a leading brand in Vietnam,” he said. VBL Danang was established following the acquisition of Fosters by the VBL Group in 2007.
Immediately after acquisition, VBL Danang capacity was expanded from 400,000 hectoliters to 525,000 hectoliters. The expansion involves various upgrades and the project was completed in February 2009.
This year, VBL Group again decided to expand the brewery capacity from 525,000 hectoliters to 750,000 hectoliters a year by doubling the capacity of the bottling line, expanding storage tanks and finished goods warehouse, among various other upgrades. This project is expected to be completed by November 2010, Minh said.
Following the rapid growth of Larue, VBL Group decided in July this year to invest further into a second brew house, expand the waste water treatment plant and the storage tanks, and upgrade various utilities to bring the production capacity to one million hectoliters. This project is expected to be up and running by October 2011, he added.
VBL Danang’s licensed capacity is 1.5 million hectoliters a year.
VBL Group is a leading brewery group in Vietnam that brews world famous brands such as Heineken, Tiger and Foster’s as well as local favorites Larue and BGI.