Anheuser-Busch makes $22.5m investment in Houston brewery

The investment includes an upgrade to the Houston brewery’s cooling system, improving workplace safety and reducing electricity consumption by 2,180,000kwh per year.

To equip the brewery with a modern, highly efficient system, the existing cooling system will be completely removed and repositioned to ensure improved functionality. A free-standing structure will also be added to house the evaporative condensers.

The Houston brewery’s new cooling system will be fully operational by Q4 2023.

Anheuser-Busch has had a presence in Houston for almost 60 years. Opened in 1966, the brewery today produces Budweiser, Bud Light, Busch Light, Natural Light and Michelob Ultra with a capacity of 14.2 million barrels.

Last year, the brewer implemented water reuse technology​ at the Houston brewery to reclaim more than 100 million gallons of water each year. It wants to build on this success with the addition of the most efficient cooling system.

Across the US, Anheuser-Busch operates more than 120 facilities, including 12 flagship breweries, 14 agricultural facilities, and 19 craft partner breweries, across 24 states.

In Texas, more than 1,000 people work in Anheuser-Busch’s facilities and nearly 6,000 are a part of the larger Anheuser-Busch distributor network. Anheuser-Busch’s work in Texas creates more than $1.4bn in capital investments, says the company.

Manufacturers in wider beer industry create $34bn in economic impact and more than 200,000 jobs in Texas, according to US Representative Dan Crenshaw (R-TX-02), who has welcomed investment announcement.

Anheuser-Busch’s US capital expenditure program has included an investment of $1bn over two years,​​ announced in 2021, to help accelerate the recovery following the pandemic.