The Courier & Advertiser (Perth and Perthshire Edition)
Brewing pioneer Bill Coors, 102
The former chairman of a worldwide brewing brand and pioneer of the aluminium beer can has died aged 102.
Bill Coors, the heir to the Coors brewing company, transformed the local brew into an internationally recognised household name.
He first took control of the now global enterprise after his older brother was murdered at the age of 44 in 1960 during a bungled kidnapping.
The family business was founded in 1873, when the German-born Adolph Coors started the brewery after arriving in America as a stowaway on a ship.
After Mr Coors officially joined the company in 1939, he transformed its activities, bringing it from selling beer in western American states to a US-wide rival to brewing giants Anheuser-Busch and Miller.
He pioneered the use of recyclable aluminium cans, oversaw the development of new filtration and packaging systems that eliminated the need for pasteurisation, and added one of the biggest selling beers in the world – Coors Light – to its core range of products.
Mr Coors remained as chief executive officer of the brewing company until 2000, when his nephew Peter Coors took over.
In 2003, at the age of 86, Mr Coors left the company’s board after 64 years.
After the brand expanded to all 50 states in the 1980s and ’90s, Adolph Coors Co merged with Molson Inc, the biggest beer maker in Canada, to form Molson Coors Brewing Company in 2005.