They selected a system based on the Rockwell Automation Logix Control Platform, consisting of Allen Bradley ControlLogix® programmable automation controllers (PAC) and 1756 I/O. They communicate with the existing DCS on Modbus™. Asia Pacific Breweries decided to migrate the brewhouse control system in phases. First, the company would replace the I/O modules and migrate them to a newer system. It needed a new I/O system that was open and modular and could be scaled for future growth. Second, the brewer had an aggressive goal to migrate each remote I/O panel during one eight-hour period of scheduled downtime — a process that can normally take several days. To help ensure that the upgrade was completed in the scheduled eight-hour period, Rockwell Automation and Asia Pacific Breweries approached this project with a pilot and ran a “dress rehearsal” of the planned upgrade.

When it comes to alcohol consumption by category, beer is still Australia’s most popular alcoholic beverage with annual consumption of 78.2 litres per capita in 2008. By comparison, the consumption of wine, RTDs and spirits was 17.0 litres, 14.0 litres and 2.1 litres per capita respectively.

Foster’s Group has warned it could take up to two years to deliver a lasting improvement in performance, after announcing an almost fourfold jump in net annual profit from AUD 111.7 million (2008) to AUD 438.3 million.

Beverages company CCA is forecasting to deliver profit growth of almost 10 percent for the second half of calendar 2009 assuming current economic conditions prevail.

Statistics for 2008 indicate that New Zealand ranks 16th among the world’s beer markets with 75.5 litres of beer per capita consumed in 2008, down from 90.5 litres in 1996.

The deal between Sapporo and Pokka, if completed in September, could go down in history as two drunks propping each other up pretending to be sober.

In his widely circulated research note “Buy … It’s Time”, Mr Errington expressed his belief that Foster’s is now "heavily undervalued" because of tentative signs of a turnaround in the global wine industry and continued strong performance of its beer business.

The largest brewpub in Asia is open for business

At the beginning of January 2008, another brewpub officially opened in South-East Asia – “Holland Beer” in the south of the city of Bangkok. This report gives an overview of planning, construction time and construction details.

Thai microbrewery hosts brewers’ get-together

The 20-something guests were being served a beer with a perfect two-fingers head. The waiters, all of them brewers of the microbrewery, worked incredibly fast – due to the personal training by brewmaster Karl Josef Eden himself. The undisputable highlight of the evening was a show by the „Country Place Show Girls“ – quite a national legend consiting of six dancing beauties.

In 2007 the global beer market had risen to just under 1.8 billion hectolitres (hl), mainly due to increased sales in the newly industrialized countries. Just under half of the total increase of 91 million hl at that time was accounted for by China, the nation that has produced the most beer every year since 2002, and this took its share of global beer production to 22 percent. Other countries with high rates of increase in production were Russia, Ukraine, Mexico, Brazil, Venezuela and Vietnam.