Local contractors share in Bluetongue Brewery construction

West Gosford-based Robson Civil have the contract for the civil works while Gosford surveyors, Bannister & Hunter, are overseeing the site works.

Contracts for the construction of the building will be let in the course of the next month with completion planned for early 2010.
The Brewery, which will have an initial annual capacity of 50 million litres – expandable to 150 million litres over time – will be the State’s second largest brewery. It will eventually become a leading tourist attraction in the region, featuring a visitors’ centre, beer-tasting, cellar door facilities and brewery tours.

It will employ up to 120 people, including employees from the existing Bluetongue Brewery in Newcastle. There will be approximately 200 jobs during the construction phase.

Terry Davis, Coca Cola Amatil’s Group Managing Director said, “I am delighted to get construction underway on our new Bluetongue Brewery. The Brewery will further support our entry to the premium beer market in Australia, and one which will enable us to deliver a quantum leap forward on the early success of Pacific Beverages – which in just two years has grown its share of the Australian premium beer market from 3.6% in September 2006 to almost 7% today.”

Mr Davis said Pacific Beverages’ success was due to its ability to bring higher levels of innovation and quality execution to the Australian beer market, and this had resulted in very strong support from its major customers. “The support of our major customers will enable us to continue to grow our share of the premium beer market and be well on track to meet our objective of becoming the third force in beer in Australia,” Mr Davis said.

Commenting on the project, Pacific Beverages CEO, Peter McLoughlin, said, “Our new Bluetongue Brewery will be unique in many aspects. It will combine a sophisticated state-of-the-art Brewhouse with equipment transferred from the existing Brewery to ensure no change of character to the Bluetongue brands but also enabling us to brew many distinctive local and international brands – a fusion of touch and technology”.

Globally, SABMiller has set itself the demanding target of reducing water use per litre of beer by 25% by 2015. This initiative will save around 20 billion litres of water every year – enough to fill eight thousand Olympic-sized swimming pools. Today’s industry average of water usage is 5 litres per litre of beer and the new Bluetongue Brewery will be less than half the industry average, targeting a benchmark usage of 2.2 litres per litre of beer.

In addition, the Brewery will be energy efficient – using bio gas from the waste water plant for steam generation, recovering heat from the brewing process using latest technologies and recycling the used malt to feed local farmers livestock.

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