25/10/2024  LinkBusiness.ie

Diageo is set to invest €30 million in its St James's Gate brewery to meet the growing demand for non-alcoholic Guinness. Sales of Guinness 0.0 on draft saw a nearly 49% increase last year, reflecting a broader trend toward non-alcoholic beverages.

Guinness has been produced at St James's Gate in Dublin for nearly 300 years, but in the last three years, the production focus has shifted significantly. To accommodate the surging interest in non-alcoholic options, the brewery is allocating more resources to this product line, which has exceeded all expectations.

With this new investment, approximately 14% of production at St James's Gate will now be dedicated to non-alcoholic Guinness, allowing for an annual output of around 176 million pints of 0.0. This move effectively doubles the brewery's capacity since 2023, raising the total investment in the production of this beverage to €60 million.

Aidan Crowe, Operations Director for Beer at Diageo Ireland, indicated that while non-alcoholic Guinness production is expected to grow, the company has stopped trying to forecast the exact rate of increase. He explained, "Initially, we had the capacity for about 40 million pints per year, which we thought would suffice for the first five years. However, after 18 months, it became clear that wasn't enough. Our next investment tripled that capacity, but we’ve only been operating at that level for nine months, and it’s already full.

"This latest investment will further double our capacity. It will account for about 14% of the total site output, but we've stopped trying to predict how much 0.0 we might ultimately need."

Regarding the production process, non-alcoholic Guinness is brewed in the same manner as regular Guinness, with the alcohol removed through a cold-filtration method that takes several days. While Guinness 0.0 is typically priced the same as its alcoholic counterpart, Diageo notes that the production of the non-alcoholic version is more complex.

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