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“We have our problems but we do have the sun" - The IBD Africa Convention 2009
By: Roger Putman
01/04/2009
The IBD Africa Convention returned to South Africa for its 2009 event. The venue was the Champagne Sports Resort at the Drakensberg World Heritage Site and the theme was The Reality of Sustainable Development. An impressive escarpment rising to 3260m above sea level faced the hotel complex with Lesotho beyond and a long way around by road. The mountain range stretches over 250km, the local Zulus call it uKhahlamba or ‘the barrier of spears’ and it reminded the Boers of the back of a dragon on their long trek from Cape Town – hence Drakensberg.
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Blue sky over Cairns - Australia’s furthest north brewery
By: Hayden Mokaraka
01/04/2009
Late in 2007 33 year old Hayden Mokaraka saw the advertisement in the Brewer & Distiller International magazine. After multiple interviews and few days in sunny Cairns with his wife Tara, they decided it was the right move. Hayden jumped at the opportunity to join the embryo Blue Sky Brewery and Restaurant to install the brew kit and get to grips with his recipes. This new micro is in tropical Cairns up in the north of Queensland and he tells the story so far.
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Boulevard Brewing bottles - A new Krones line in Kansas City
By: Tim Raymond
01/04/2009
Located in Kansas City, Missouri, Boulevard Brewing Company is one of the most successful US craft breweries of the past two decades. The brewery rose from humble beginnings in 1989 to become the Midwest’s largest specialty brewer, and the eighth largest craft brewery in the country. With demand for its beers on the rise, Boulevard’s founder and president John McDonald has been steadily expanding the facility with a new Steinecker brewhouse in 2006, followed by a Krones bottling line in 2008.
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Edrington integrates - Wireless connection to SAP via Zetes MiNetConnect
01/04/2009
The Scotland-based Edrington Group, with its blended whiskies The Famous Grouse and Cutty Sark and the single malts Macallan and Highland Park, has 900 staff and turned £230 million last year. When the company completed a major upgrade of its enterprise SAP software, the spotlight for continuous improvement was turned on to the company’s warehouse operations in Glasgow.
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Handle responsibly - Safe high-bay working from Hyster
By: Gavin Tull
01/04/2009
Time moves very slowly within the whisky maturation process, however the movement and management of casks of bulk spirit is crucial to the ultimate flavour and allure of the final product. Even the oldest spirits are moved during maturation and the high volumes of bulk spirits now lend themselves to high bay warehouse practice.
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The warehouse of opportunity - A look at Linde trucks
01/04/2009
Companies are continually trying to optimise their supply chains to get the right balance between the lowest cost, the highest levels of service and the lowest environmental impact. One area that can be overlooked is warehouse planning and materials handling.
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Efficient storage of whisky casks - A Link 51 installation at Macallen
01/04/2009
An innovative racking system designed, manufactured and installed by the UK’s leading storage solutions company, Link 51 allows the Edrington Group to store casks of malt whisky in two new maturation warehouses situated at the Macallan Distillery in Craigellachie in Moray. Each warehouse is approximately 6000 square metres in size and provides easy access to, and excellent protection for, the casks as well as high levels of safety for staff.
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The little brewery that can! Having fun at Colorado’s Oskar Blues
By: Dave Thomas
01/04/2009
What started out as a small brewpub with a basement music room has become one of the fastest-growing craft breweries in the United States. Rolling Stone magazine called Oskar Blues brewpub in Lyons, “The hottest place to be on a Saturday night in Colorado.”
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Route optimisation - A necessary formula for success
By: Guy Mucklow
01/04/2009
There’s an elephant in the room when it comes to supply chains. The trouble is, in a recession, this elephant could slowly trample breweries and distilleries to death. The elephant is called “routing.”
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Pre-Prohibition American breweries - A Midwestern view
By: Susan Appel
01/04/2009
Breweries were once far more common features of Midwestern American towns than many today would expect. These industrial buildings appeared soon after the founding of many 19th-century communities, often growing alongside the towns they served. By 1920, when Prohibition decimated the brewing industry, Midwestern American breweries had evolved from very primitive structures to handsome complexes of specialised, architect-designed buildings.
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Reducing supply chain costs - A 12-Point Action Plan for survival
By: Brian Templar
01/04/2009
It’s official – not that we didn’t know it already! – we are in recession. The task now is to accept the reality and prepare not only to survive the downturn but also to ensure that your organisation can take advantage of the upturn when it comes. Businesses are not only at risk now, but also will be when the situation eases, because that’s when leaner, fitter competitors will have the potential to outcompete weaker rivals.
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Modern warehousing west of the Tamar - St Austell Brewery’s new facility in Cornwall
By: Roger Putman
01/04/2009
You are always made welcome at St Austell down in Cornwall. I suppose they are so far away from the rest of us that they are even pleased to see a tired old hack like your Editor. It was straight off the train and down to Fowey where Head Brewer Roger Ryman and his local boat club Chairman Shane Sullivan addressed the AGM of the Fowey branch of the RNLI about brewing and an arduous trip around the whole of Cornwall in an open boat.
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Sustainable malting - Recycling process water
By: Nigel Davies
01/04/2009
Water is one of the key resources on our planet and the expected dramatic increase in world population up to 2020 is considered to place many of the world’s communities at or near their natural level of water availability. With water usage at this unprecedented rate the generation of wastewater will likewise peak. Thus it is paramount that plans are developed now to conserve water by effective reclamation and recycling to extend our available supplies.
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Logistics of carbon responsibility
By: Matt Crampton
01/04/2009
The drinks industry relies heavily on specialist logistics companies like Tradeteam for distribution of their products. As millions of litres of alcoholic beverages are moved around the UK each week these companies have a huge responsibility in addressing the impact that their services have on the environment and the increasing importance of minimising the carbon footprint of drinks distribution.
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Canadian Beer of the Year ... again!
By: Daniel Girard, Brian Titus
01/04/2009
Award-winning Halifax microbrewer, Garrison Brewing Co, was once again honoured with the prestigious ‘Canadian Beer of the Year’ title for its’ Imperial Pale Ale at the Canadian Brewing Awards.
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Where beer meets whiskey at mile high - Stranahan’s in Denver
By: Dave Thomas
01/04/2009
“Beware of the Dog” greeted the crew members who volunteered to help bottle Stranahan’s Colorado Whiskey batch number 26 in Denver, Colorado more than two years after the whiskey process was started in a local micro-brewery’s mash tun. A promise of cold beer during bottling, pizza for lunch and a take-home bottle of Stranahan’s finest was all the incentive needed by the twenty-five volunteers
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United and in great spirit! A visit to United Spirits at Bangalore
By: Simon Jackson
01/04/2009
Through the good offices of Mr Prabir Poddar and Dr. Binod K Maitin (both of whom were delegates at the recent World Distilled Spirits Conference) I was invited to visit United Spirits during my recent travels to attend the drinktec India event last November.