The Rittmayer Hallerndorf Brewery, one of Germany’s oldest family-owned breweries, celebrated its 600th anniversary in the autumn of 2022. The company not only brews roughly 30,000 hectolitres of beer per year in the finest of craft traditions. It also operates as a co-packer for both smaller and larger breweries with its state-of-the-art filling centre. For a good 20 years now, Rittmayer has filled a vast array of highly disparate beers (up to 100,000 hectolitres a year) into a total of nine different bottle shapes. That has made it one of the largest contract bottlers for beer in its home region Upper Franconia. The centre serves mostly (but not exclusively) the many small privately owned breweries which are the hallmark of the beer-brewing stronghold Upper Franconia. There are roughly 200 breweries here for a mere 1.1 million inhabitants.
The can offers many advantages
The filling centre is now being substantially expanded to also include beverage cans in its portfolio, a first for the brewery. This is managing director Georg Rittmayer’s way of responding to the trend towards cans which has for some years been observed in the beer sector as well. He explains: “We take great care in ensuring sustainability in our company. The can doesn’t weigh much, it boasts a high recycling rate and does not entail any losses in quality.”
