On Tuesday, AB Inbev has officially inaugurated the new increased malting of its Mexican subsidiary Grupo Modelo in Calera, Zacatecas, Mexico. The plant was enlarged from 78,000 to 183,000 tons of malt per year and costed US $60-million. It will employ 40 staff. The construction took two years to be completed and makes Zacatecas the biggest malting plant in Mexico.
200,000 tons of malting barley, which are needed for the plant, are expected to be provided by local producers on 140,000 hectares of farm land. This will create more than 2.200 jobs in the farming sector, the equivalent of one third of the number of existing jobs, only in the state capital.
In order to collect barley from local farmers further away, the company also built a new silo for 12,550 tons of grain in the Sombrerete region, Zacatecas, about 140 km north-west of Calera.
In 2010 about 313,000 ha of barley were planted in the country of which 230,000 belonged to malting barley. About two thirds of the barley is grown in the spring-summer cycle with yields of about 2.0 mt per ha and the remainder irrigated in the fall-winter cycle with yields of about 5.8 ha. Total malting barley production was about 650,000 mt in 2010 with all of it being 6-row varieties. (<link news detail mexico-first-independent-malting-inaugurated.html>inside.beer, 17.5.2018)
With “the largest brewing plant in the world and the largest malting plant in Mexico,” Grupo Modelo is reasserting its commitment with Zacatecas to create more jobs and boost the farming sector, José Luis Taylor, Grupo Modelo’s sustainability and agribusiness director said.
The general manager of Compañía Cervecera de Zacatecas, Rafael Eduardo Sánchez Galván, said that with the support of the federal and state governments, the development of the project brought multiple benefits for the economic impact of the state over these two years, such as the expansion of new direct jobs and additional indirect jobs with suppliers and contractors in the region, which will continue to position the company as a leader in beer production for Mexico and the world.
