Molson Coors Beverage Company has completed the installation of new equipment in its Milwaukee and Fort Worth breweries to increase production capacity for fast-growing brands such as Blue Moon LightSky, Vizzy and Coors Seltzer by more than 400% in 2021.
The multimillion-dollar project, which became fully operational just before Thanksgiving, will help the company meet growing demand for its stable of new products as well as other beverages on the way, says Brian Erhardt, chief supply chain officer at Molson Coors.
“We’ve seen tremendous growth in Vizzy, Coors Seltzer and Blue Moon LightSky since each of these products were introduced earlier this year, and we’re full steam ahead from a production standpoint,” Erhardt says. “These investments will allow us to keep up with demand as we work to aggressively grow our above-premium portfolio and prepare for additional product launches that the revamped Fort Worth and Milwaukee breweries are now fully prepared to handle.”
Blue Moon LightSky ranks as the top-selling new beer and Vizzy ranks among the top five new beer and malt beverage products released in 2020, per year-to-date Nielsen data through Nov. 21. Coors Seltzer, meanwhile, is in the top 20 new products to debut this year, despite not launching nationally until the third quarter, data show.
And there are more new products on the way in 2021, including two new entries to the seltzer category: Topo Chico Hard Seltzer and Proof Point, which CEO Gavin Hattersley has said will help Molson Coors capture a double-digit share of the U.S. hard seltzer market by the end of next year.
The infrastructure investments are the latest in a series of moves the company has made since Hattersley unveiled a restructuring and revitalization plan last year.
Molson Coors recently completed a new brewery near Vancouver, British Columbia, and also plans to open a new brewery in Montreal in late 2021. On top of that, it broke ground on a massive, multi-hundred-million-dollar overhaul of its brewery in Golden, Colo., and announced a substantial investment in its Rocky Mountain Metal Container can plant that will enable the company to produce an additional 750 million slim cans per year.
Together, “these investments will help power our business forward,” Hattersley said during the company’s most-recent earnings call on Oct. 29. “And we will continue prioritizing capital projects to continue expanding our production capacity for seltzers and innovations in 2021 and 2022.”