Innopro Ecostab keeps its promises
Olympic Brewery S.A., founded in Greece in 2010, is one which is profiting from a beer history that takes some beating – despite its relatively young age. The reason is that prior to its establishment the owners of the brewery procured the brand rights to the first brand beer in Greece: Fix. Fix was produced during the reign of King Otto, Greece's first monarch, and made by Fix Brewery in Athens and Thessaloníki up until 1982. When non-Greek brewery groups joined the market, Fix Brewery went bankrupt and the brand rights to Fix were transfered to the National Bank of Greece. At the beginning of 2000 Greek wine producer Kourtakis procured the rights to Fix and in 2009 sold them to the owners of what's now Olympic Brewery, namely Ioannis Chitos and brothers George and Elias Grekis.
With the brand rights newly secured the three proprietors saw more opportunities than risks and thus considerably expanded the production capacities at an old microbrewery in the town of Ritsona, around 70 km from Athens. In 2010, the year of its founding, Olympic Brewery sold 120,000 hectoliters of beer. In 2011 sales rose to 190,00 hectoliters, with figures continuing to spiral in the following years to 385,000 (2012) and 400,000 hectoliters (2013) – despite the Greek beer market displaying a marked downwards trend. In 2005 the consumption of beer per capita was 40 liters; this has since dropped to 32 liters.
By instigating a successful brand policy and giving Fix a taste specially geared to the Greek palate the company profited, also benefiting from the fact that during the recent crisis the people of Greece showed a distinct favor for the consumption of Greek products. This has also helped to make Olympic Brewery number three among Greece's breweries (after the Athenian Brewery, which belongs to the Heineken Group, and Mythos Brewery, part of the Carlsberg Group) in such a short space of time.
In 2012 the company's consistent growth in sales prompted the brewery to switch from the one-way process for tannin-side beer stabilization it had implemented to date to the regenerative beer stabilization method. Many alternatives were checked prior to investment. Konstantinos Agouridas, master brewer and production manager at Olympic Brewery, says, "During this process we quickly realized that the Innopro Ecostab gave us the best range of benefits. However, we were a bit wary about investing in this system as it was new and hardly used in practice." After having their Innopro Ecostab in operation for almost a year now, these doubts have completely disappeared. States Agouridas, "We now know that the Innopro Ecostab gives us just what KHS promised us." The following features are particularly important to Olympic Brewery: the compactness of the modular system which runs 24/7; very short setup times for system startup and shutdown; short switching times between different beer styles and thus minimized blending amounts when changing products; and an extremely low consumption of PVPP. Agouridas tells us more. "Before we put the Innopro Ecostab into operation, we budgeted with around €300,000 a year for the disposable, one-way PVPP we used. Our PVPP costs have now dropped to €10,000 per year. Based on this and other factors we're reckoning on a return on our investment in just two years." The Innopro Ecostab at Olympic Brewery stabilizes beer using three stabilizer modules with two columns apiece. Up to 300 hectoliters of beer can be stabilized per hour. With this, the brewery feels it is also best prepared for all large rises in sales in the future.
With the brand rights newly secured the three proprietors saw more opportunities than risks and thus considerably expanded the production capacities at an old microbrewery in the town of Ritsona, around 70 km from Athens. In 2010, the year of its founding, Olympic Brewery sold 120,000 hectoliters of beer. In 2011 sales rose to 190,00 hectoliters, with figures continuing to spiral in the following years to 385,000 (2012) and 400,000 hectoliters (2013) – despite the Greek beer market displaying a marked downwards trend. In 2005 the consumption of beer per capita was 40 liters; this has since dropped to 32 liters.
By instigating a successful brand policy and giving Fix a taste specially geared to the Greek palate the company profited, also benefiting from the fact that during the recent crisis the people of Greece showed a distinct favor for the consumption of Greek products. This has also helped to make Olympic Brewery number three among Greece's breweries (after the Athenian Brewery, which belongs to the Heineken Group, and Mythos Brewery, part of the Carlsberg Group) in such a short space of time.
In 2012 the company's consistent growth in sales prompted the brewery to switch from the one-way process for tannin-side beer stabilization it had implemented to date to the regenerative beer stabilization method. Many alternatives were checked prior to investment. Konstantinos Agouridas, master brewer and production manager at Olympic Brewery, says, "During this process we quickly realized that the Innopro Ecostab gave us the best range of benefits. However, we were a bit wary about investing in this system as it was new and hardly used in practice." After having their Innopro Ecostab in operation for almost a year now, these doubts have completely disappeared. States Agouridas, "We now know that the Innopro Ecostab gives us just what KHS promised us." The following features are particularly important to Olympic Brewery: the compactness of the modular system which runs 24/7; very short setup times for system startup and shutdown; short switching times between different beer styles and thus minimized blending amounts when changing products; and an extremely low consumption of PVPP. Agouridas tells us more. "Before we put the Innopro Ecostab into operation, we budgeted with around €300,000 a year for the disposable, one-way PVPP we used. Our PVPP costs have now dropped to €10,000 per year. Based on this and other factors we're reckoning on a return on our investment in just two years." The Innopro Ecostab at Olympic Brewery stabilizes beer using three stabilizer modules with two columns apiece. Up to 300 hectoliters of beer can be stabilized per hour. With this, the brewery feels it is also best prepared for all large rises in sales in the future.
