Right beer
capital. Each truck that leaves for Moscow carries 31 pallets of
beer. In the winter, when the roads present more difficult driving
conditions, a return trip to Moscow takes 54 hours. In summertime
the drivers can cover the same distance in 42 hours. "To reduce
the transport costs we load goods for other businesses on the
trucks in Moscow that are returning to St. Petersburg. We only do
that in the winter, as during the extremely busy summer period
we want to get the trucks back to the brewery as quickly as
possible," says Eugeny Konyahin.
To supply all other cities Bravo uses freight trains and for that
purpose it has built a loading bay on its own brewery site. Each
freight wagon can carry 85 pallets. On the map of Russia Victor
Pyatko points to the furthest places that are supplied: "We do not
deliver any further east than Irkutsk. From St. Petersburg that's a
journey of a maximum of fourteen days. We have decided that
Irkutsk is the furthest point we will make deliveries to.
Transporting our products by rail to destinations even further
away would mean that the quality of the beer would suffer too
much from the extreme weather conditions. In that region daytime
temperatures can climb to as high as 35 degrees, and then drop
to ten degrees below zero at night. If that happens for several days
in succession, then it is obviously very bad for the quality of the
product. We also have customers even further away, in Vladivostok
(on the east coast of Russia, ed.) but they have their beer
delivered by plane."
Vodka is the Russian national drink. A visit to various supermarkets
proves this. Dozens of vodka brands line the shelves. "And these
