Quality & Sustainability

Simply because they go with the territory.

Awards-winning quality

Quality is the top priority at OeTTINGER BEVERAGES

Using first-class raw materials, state-of-the-art brewing and production technology along with seamless internal and external quality controls, we guarantee absolute top quality. We are regularly certified according to IFS (International Featured Standards) and eco-audits and have been presented with medals by the DLG (German Food Association). Since 1980 alone, we have received over 320 DLG awards! In addition, we have received 16 international Gold & High Quality awards, 12 German state awards and 5 national awards for consistently high performance and quality.

384th DLG Quality Award for OETTINGER BEVERAGES

11. April 2025 | Quality

Vor 45 Jahren wurde zum ersten Mal ein Produkt der Marke OeTTINGER von der Deutschen Landwirtschafts-Gesellschaft (DLG) für seine Qualität prämiert. Seitdem erhielten sowohl zahlreiche Sorten als auch unsere deutschlandweit regionalen Standorte von OeTTINGER GETRÄNKE zusammen 343 Medaillen in Gold, Silber und Bronze, 13 Landesehrenpreise und fünf Bundesehrenpreise für Lebensmittel sowie 23 Preise für langjährige Produktqualität.

OeTTINGER celebrates a golden quadruple

20. March 2025 | Quality

A quartet of OeTTINGER beers claimed gold awards at the latest DLG quality controls: OeTTINGER Helles, OeTTINGER Natur Radler, OeTTINGER alcohol-free, and OeTTINGER Weißbier alcohol-free. We are so proud of these accolades!

Value for money: OeTTINGER claims second place

28. January 2025 | Quality

For the sixth consecutive year, OeTTINGER has been ranked in second place in terms of value for money in the annual Handelsblatt Rankings. For German consumers, one thing is clear: OeTTINGER beer offers top quality at a fair price.

We don’t just advertise sustainability, we live it.

And we’ve been doing so ever since we were founded.

Efficient and resource-conserving production…

…is embedded in our corporate strategy, the OeTTINGER BEVERAGES Concept. With our “Fit for the Future” energy efficiency program for the company’s operations, we have also committed to continuously reducing energy consumption in production, bottling and delivery. ISO-certified …and with growing success.

Examples:

We always work with the latest and consequently, the most energy-efficient technology in our plants.
We generate our own environmentally friendly electricity in our combined heat and power plants in Oettingen and Mönchengladbach.
Thanks to presence-dependent LED lighting controls in our bottling halls, we require extremely little energy, saving hundreds of tons of CO2 every year in this way.
We are also working on smart grids, i.e. intelligent electricity grid management, and on more efficient use of the gas from our wastewater treatment plants to generate heat.

Protecting the environment also means valuing raw materials.

From the start, when we buy malt and hops, our focus is on quality from the region.
We capture the CO2 produced during alcohol fermentation in the brewing process and use it as carbon dioxide for our beverages.
We give the left-over mash from brewing, known as brewer’s spent grain (BSG), to farmers, who use it as animal feed.
We also grow our own yeast for our beers in each of our four breweries. If we have too much of it, we share it and sometimes, it may even end up as a base ingredient in natural cosmetic products.

Two hands hold some yeast from Oettinger

Regionally across Germany

Oettingen in Bavaria, Mönchengladbach in North Rhine-Westphalia and Braunschweig in Lower Saxony – this is where we are at home: It’s where we brew and blend your drinks. Regionally across Germany. The major advantages for the environment are obvious:

 Our raw materials come from certified partners in the respective regions of our plants and are processed on site.
We also bottle our beverages directly at our production facilities and deliver the returnable glass products from there to local markets using our own fleet of trucks.
This guarantees short, efficient routes and, above all, ensures the best quality and freshness from the region.
With 200 to 400 personnel at each of our sites, we are also a major employer.

Reusable – without the bells and whistles

For the German market, we mainly bottle our OeTTINGER BEVERAGES’ range of drinks in returnable glass bottles. We use what are known in the industry as “pool bottles”, i.e. standard shapes without any branding. It means that any other brewery can also use these bottles… and this in turn fulfils the original intent of the reusable system: The faster a bottle is returned and the more often it is reused, the more sustainable it is. Have you ever noticed whitish rings above the label on the front of a bottle? The clearer they are, the more often the bottle has been used. It’s why we affectionately call these marks Sustainability Rings.
Most of our bottles end up in typical OeTTINGER blue standard cases. We use just three bottle shapes for over 30 varieties and this enables us to have only three different case shapes. Uniformity in diversity: Reusable – without the bells and whistles. You can find out more about this in the short videos from our Reusability Month of May.