Molson Coors is investing $65 million to build an approximately 200,000-sq-ft packing warehouse at its Fort Worth, Texas, brewery to bring more hard seltzer production in-house and accommodate its growing Topo Chico Hard Seltzer and Vizzy brands. The warehouse will enable the brewery to handle the storing, packaging, shipping, and logistics for its current offerings, and also may be used for future brands as the company expands its portfolio beyond the beer aisle.
The warehouse will include a variety pack system capable of packaging up to six different flavors in 12- or 24-pack configurations and repack up to 1.5 million barrels annually.
The warehouse will allow the brewery to stop taking the cans of product to third-party vendors for placement into the variety packs, since hard seltzer produced and canned at the Fort Worth brewery will to go directly to the warehouse on campus to be packaged. Molson Coors says it believes this will reduce shipping costs, improve the time to market, and give the company more control over the products it makes.
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The ground has already been broken on the project, which is projected to be completed later this year. It is expected to add 200 new jobs to the company’s local workforce, which has been around 500 employees in recent years.
“This expansion truly represents the next step toward strengthening our in-house hard seltzer capabilities, as its one of many recent investments we made at Fort Worth aimed at growing our above premium portfolio and transforming the company’s offerings to meet consumers’ changing preferences,” says Jim Crawford, vice president and plant manager.
