From Bürgstadt (Odenwald), across the Main and Rhein to the Port of Neuss and on to Mönchengladbach: Huge stainless steel tanks have traveled this route and continue to do so. Their destination: the OeTTINGER Brewery in Mönchengladbach. The reason: modern technology for the Mönchengladbach production site.
In addition to highly trained and motivated employees, cutting-edge and efficient technologies form the essential basis from which OeTTINGER Brewery is able to stay relevant in the fiercely competitive beer market. This is why in Mönchengladbach, OeTTINGER’s second-largest brewing location, the family enterprise is sending out another clear signal to the market by installing 16 new pressure tanks. Standing at up to 30 meters, the company is investing around EUR 10 million in these stainless steel giants, with an additional EUR 5 million set to be pumped into an extension of the loading hall over the next few years. Technical work is scheduled for completion by August 2019, when the system can then put into operation. Preparations began as early as spring 2018. Dr. Andreas Boettger, Managing Director of Technology at OeTTINGER Brewery, is proud of this development: “These tanks, which come in three different sizes, present us with the opportunity to showcase the huge diversity of products that our brewery offers even more effectively. We brew nearly everything here in Mönchengladbach: from pilsner, export and wheat beers to bock and seasonal variants. The list goes on! And, of course, we are particularly adept at brewing exceptional ‘Altbier’.”
In recent years, the OeTTINGER site in Mönchengladbach has already been setting new standards in innovative technologies in the brewing industry: For example, its energy-efficient brew-runner procedure makes OeTTINGER one of the most innovative breweries in Germany. In 2015, the company also put into operation an industrial membrane filter, enabling smooth filtration and clarification of the beer at low energy input.
The 16 pressure tanks, which will temporarily store the filtered beer until it is ready for bottling, measure 4.20 meters in diameter and, when empty, weigh up to 30 tons. The smallest four are 17 meters high, four more are 21 meters high and the largest eight tanks reach up to 30 meters. Just one of these largest tanks can contain 3,400 hectoliters of beer, which is the same as 26 lorries full of OeTTINGER beer crates. After being stored in the pressure tanks, the beer is then transferred into bottles and cans in a fully automated process. In this stage, the replacement construction is connected to the existing bottling plants by means of a system of pipes running above ground.
This huge investment is one of the ways in which OeTTINGER is responding to a price-sensitive and particularly demanding national beer market, which requires constant optimization of processes without sacrificing the quality of the product. “To this end, the Mönchengladbach production site is helping enormously with its new tanks and process technologies, among other things”, says Boettger. “We are installing these tanks so that we can continue to offer our customers the best beer at an attractive price.”
