Guinness parent company Diageo has invested €25 million in six new tanks and a new two-story building to help meet the growing demand for non-alcoholic Guinness.
The new tanks, which stand over 25 meters tall, will help increase the production of Guinness 0.0 by 300% at the St. James' Gate Brewery.
The tanks were made in Burgstadt in Germany before being shipped to Dublin Port and transported to the famous brewery under Garda escort.
Each new tank has a capacity for approximately 90 million pints, while the new Guinness 0.0 facility has a total capacity of 500,000 hectoliters.
Barry O'Sullivan, Managing Director of Diageo Ireland, told the Irish Times that Guinness 0.0 is the best-selling non-alcoholic beer in Ireland and the UK in four-pack format and said the expansion of the Guinness 0.0 facilities in Dublin was a reflection of the drink's growing popularity.
"This expansion in production capacity at St James’s Gate is a testament to the quality of Guinness 0.0 and the growth of the non-alcoholic category, as consumers look for more choice on different occasions," O'Sullivan told the Irish Times.
All Guinness 0.0 is brewed at the St. James' Gate Brewery before being shipped around the world. The non-alcoholic drink's main export markets include the UK, the United States, Canada, and South Korea.
Diageo first launched Guinness 0.0 in 2021 and applied for planning permission in 2022 to expand its St. James' Gate facilities to cater to the growing demand for the non-alcoholic product.
Diageo expects that demand to increase in the coming years and predicts that Guinness 0.0 will account for one out of every ten Guinness sales in Ireland in the near future.
The Guinness Storehouse at St. James's Gate, Dublin.
The non-alcoholic alternative is brewed using a cold filtration system that extracts alcohol from Guinness that has already been brewed at St. James' Gate.
The news of Guinness 0.0's expansion in production comes just three weeks after Diageo announced the non-alcoholic stout will be available on draught across Ireland within months. Until this year the zero-alcohol brew has only been available in a 538 ml can in the vast majority of bars.
A County Louth publican who is planning on stocking the 0.0 draught told the Irish Mirror "The drink is very popular with designated drivers who feel they can still have good craic [fun] drinking a zero and it almost tastes as nice as the real thing.
"The drink has become a big hit in a very short space of time and now Guinness wants to roll it out everywhere.
"The reaction to it from the punters is very positive and the 0.0 obviously has a huge future and is currently the number one non-alcoholic drink."
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