Buying beer bottling equipment is a big decision for any brewery. We get it. Entering the packaged market changes the game for you. We’re here to help you make the right decision. Consider the following factors when buying beer bottling equipment:
Reliability. Uptime matters. Problems with the beer bottling equipment create all kinds of other problems in your system. Upstream, your tanks stay full, disrupting your brew schedule. Downstream, suppliers don’t get the product they ordered. That’s lost revenue, reputation damage…no good comes from that. Your beer bottling equipment needs to be reliable, with a minimum of downtime.
Quality Control. Imagine it, your first bottling run. You’ve got your flagship going out to a major retailer distributing throughout the entire state. A week later, their buyer is blowing up your phone because your bottles are blowing up in his stores. Or they’re flat. Or you had too many low fills and couldn’t send the order out on time. Few things are more damaging to your business than a massive batch of bad bottles. In this competitive marketplace, your brand might never recover. We cannot stress this enough, insist on the best equipment possible for quality control, or risk the consequences.
Resale value. Bottling equipment is a massive investment, but it’s not so flexible. Each system has certain runs that it can do. If you’re a huge success and need more, you’ll want a bigger bottler, so you’ll need to sell your old beer bottling equipment. (Resale value matters if you’re not so successful, too, but we won’t talk about that). When it comes time to upside, downsize or whatever, if you need to sell your equipment, you want reliable equipment with a good resale value.
Flexibility. Some cheapo equipment really struggles with flexibility. It can’t do different bottle sizes, it can’t handle corks…whatever the issue, consider whether your beer bottle equipment is placing constraints on your packaging capabilities. Market needs change – make sure your equipment can change with the market.
