Baku, Fineko/abc.az. Earlier this January the name of beer company Baltika in Azerbaijan has undergone changes in the Charter.

Baltika’s press service informs that the Khirdalan-based brewery has almost 40-year history and over the passed years it has replaced some names. Now its name reflects belonging to Russia’s Baltika.

“Since January 2009 the Khirdalan brewery has been operating as Baku-Baltika,” it was reported.

Russian company Baltika completed acquisition of the brewery in Azerbaijan in August 2008. As a result, Baltika acquired a 90% equity stake in Baku-Castel brewery in July 2008. Investments in Khirdalan brewery will initially make up to $20 million but can be increased in future. This is the first case of opening of a brewery by Baltika outside of Russia.

Currently Baltika is reconstructing its new production line by the season of 2009. The brewery will be upgraded cooking fermentation and filtrating rooms, re-equipped lines of bottling into glass packing and installed a line for beer bottling into PET packing.

Baltika-Baku general director Adam Tlekhuray says that 10 years have passed from the time of last reconstruction of the brewery and apparently for this period equipment installed then has become obsolete.

“Our high-priority challenge is to re-equip the enterprise to organize manufacture of “Baltika” and “Arsenal” beer by the start of the season. It means that by May we should make the brewery to conform to all standards and production requirements that are compulsory for Baltika company’s breweries,” Mr. Tlekhuray said.

A new brewing kettle is to be installed in the cooking room and a new line for wort cooling. The fermentation and filtration room will be installed a modern station of pure culture yeast, yeast collecting tank, a station of  in-place cleaning  of equipment, upgraded line of beer filtration.

A new advanced automatic labeling machine, a sleeve impact, new machines for sticking excise duty stamps and thermo-packing machine were bought for line of bottling into glass packing. The shop will also be installed a set line of bottling in PET-bottles with bottling production rate into PET-bottles with size of 1.5 litre – 20,000 bottles/hour and 2.5 litres – 10,000 bottles/hour.

The Khirdalan brewery commissioned in 1969 belonged to production union Baku-Beer and was one of the six biggest breweries in the USSR times. In 1997 the brewery was transferred into ownership of France’s concern Group Castel.

In 1999 the brewery underwent large-scale reconstruction. By 2008 enterprise’s output made more than 70% of the Azerbaijani market.

On 15 May 2008 company Baltika and Internationales Holding (Eastern) Ltd (BIH Eastern) signed an agreement on acquisition of the brewery in Khirdalan.

After the deal was approved by Azerbaijani antimonopoly services, the brewery became part of Baltika company. In 2009 it was renamed in Baku-Baltika.

13.01.2009 10:58