In October 1997
Multi Bintang in Indonesia
officially opened its
new brewery near
Sampang Agung, south east
of Surabaya. The old
brewery, which had been in
operation for 66 years, has
meanwhile been closed.
MULTI BINTANG OPENS NEW I
Multi Bintang had two main reasons
for building a new brewery: the old
brewery was located within the fast-
growing Surabaya urban area and
the authorities ruled that it would
have to disappear from the city in
due course. The second argument
was that the brewery's capacity
(more than 400,000 hi) was absolute
ly insufficient to keep pace with
(future) demand.
OBSTACLE
Construction started in March 1996
and thirteen months later, in April
this year, the first brew was produ
ced. Construction work was supervi
sed and monitored by Heineken Tech
nical Services. Building was initially
scheduled to start in September 1995,
but the supply of water proved to be
an obstacle. Contrary to all expecta
tions, insufficient water was found
to be available on the site, and so the
brewery now transports water to the
site via pipelines from the surroun
ding area. Some five kilometres from
the site the brewery has drilled three
wells, which contain so much water
that they will enable all potential
future expansion scenarios to be
realised.
WOODEN
The brewery brews Bir Bintang in the
62 cl bottle, the 33 cl bottle and the
thirty litre keg. The brewery works
with plastic crates. At the moment
the Indonesian beer market is in a
transitional phase from wooden to
plastic crates. The operation is due to
be completed at the beginning of 1998.
Eighteen relatively new ferment
ation tanks have been transferred
from the old brewery to the new one.
A number of other installations will
be relocated to Multi Bintang's brew
ery in Tangerang, close to the capital
Jakarta.
From left to right: Technical Director Roland
Grasman, Brewery Manager Judi Tiokrondo
and HTS employee Frank Steenstra Toussaint.
