My loss your gain
Only in October 2008 had Heineken opened a new brewery in Seville in the presence of His Majesty, King Juan Carlos I of Spain. One month later Heineken announced that it would close its brewery in Arano (Navarre), thus bringing down the number of its plants in Spain to four.
Heineken’s five million hl Seville brewery represents an investment of EUR 260 million. As could be expected, some of this capacity would have to be saved elsewhere. In this case in Arano. Sometime next year Heineken will close its brewery there, resulting in the loss of 69 jobs. Heineken says that the jobs will not be axed. To mitigate the impact, there will be early retirement schemes, voluntary redundancies and transfers to other locations.
As of 2009 Heineken will only operate four breweries in Madrid, Valencia, Seville and Jáen. In 2007, consolidated beer volume of Heineken España totalled 11.4 million hl, it was reported.
Beer consumption in Spain has been going up for the past four years according to figures published by the Spanish brewers’association. In the first nine months of 2008, Spaniards and tourists drowned more than 25 million hl of beer. Unless the current financial crisis will hit Spain hard, total beer consumption this year will exceed last year’s record of 33 million hl.
