The Rolling Rock brand has packed its bags and moved to New Jersey, but Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell made an announcement this week designed to get the disused Latrobe Brewery back up and running.
Pennsylvania has given City Brewing Co. of Wisconsin, which purchased the plant from InBev USA, a $4.5 million package of loans and grants to upgrade and expand the plant. The brewery has been closed since July. That's when Anheuser-Busch purchased the Rolling Rock brand for $82 million.
City Brewing plans to employ at least 250 people, many of them former Latrobe Brewery workers. State officials say the company will invest $10 million in the brewery and expand the plant's capacity to 2 million barrels. City Brewing markets brands such as LaCrosse Beer, but it also contract brews beer, malt beverages, teas, energy drinks and soft drinks for other firms.
1 comment:
I am not from Wisconsin but I am a proud union member (Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers Division 2 Jackson Michigan) and a firm believer in jobs for all. I have kept an eye on the City Brewery for a few years now and they seem to have a sense for the preservation of tradition in the brewing industry while at the same time are not afraid of chasing after business. Their beers are of good quality and the employees I've met seem to have a sense of pride in what they do. I think, and hope, that the citizens of Latrobe will be happy with the people from Lacrosse. And in this whole mess it just gives me yet another reason to not drink Anhueser-Busch products. The list keeps getting longer and longer, but they have a knack for selling really bad beer to small-minded people who do not demand a quality product. It's kind of sad really, to think that a business can become that huge by selling an inferior product. Just proves what advertising can do.
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