Brewing companies have set their sights on the Carioca country. No wonder, just look at the investment data for 2021. Last year Brazil produced 14.1 billion liters of beer, but according to the latest movements of multinational breweries, it seems that much more will be produced in the coming years. If we translate this data into numbers, Brazil has generated 900 million in investment in the last year.
One of the first companies to invest was Hijos de Rivera. The Galician company, which produces and markets Estrella Galicia, announced a few months ago that it would allocate around 300 million euros to build its first production center outside A Coruña, specifically in Araquara, in the state of Sao Paulo.
For the Spanish factory, this project will be the largest investment in its history in foreign lands. A project that has been delayed after the difficulty of finding a suitable location that would guarantee water of sufficient quality. The new plant is expected to be ready and start operating by 2023.
Other large companies such as Heineken and Brazil’s Ambev have also announced major investments in an unprecedented expansion process. Two of the large groups operating in the country, Petrópolis and Ambev, opened new plants last year after spending almost 300 million. The first in Urebara, in Minas Gerais, where it built a 108,000 square meter plant with a capacity to produce 8.6 million hectoliters per year, for which it spent 189 million. The second in Sete Lagoas, in the same state, where a 45,000-square-meter can plant was opened.
The Dutch group Heineken, Ambev’s main competitor in the Brazilian market, is also carrying out an ambitious expansion plan, the most important point of which is the factory it started to build in the city of Pedro Leopoldo, in Minas Gerais. The facilities require an investment of approximately 283 million to reach a capacity of 760 million liters per year.
Although Brazil is trying to recover little by little from the hard blow of Covid-19, which caused a 4.1% decline in GDP in 2020, the major brewers have decided to invest in the country in view of its great potential, with which they hope to obtain the first favorable results before 2023.