Distribution center to be built in area

Anheuser-Busch is building a new distribution center in central Ohio and investing in improvements at its brewery in Columbus.

The brewery here, built in 1962, can make 10 million barrels a year. But for the maker of Budweiser, Michelob, Natural Light and many other brands, bigger isn’t better anymore. It wants to be more flexible and a little faster.

To that end, the company is investing $82 million in new distribution centers, one here and one in Los Angeles, to store and quickly ship a greater variety of products.

The company declined to be specific on how much of that sum will be spent in the central Ohio center.

The location of central Ohio’s center also was not specifically disclosed, other than it will be about 30 miles away from Anheuser-Busch’s 200-acre complex on the North Side.

The new distribution center is expected to be up and running by December, the company said, and will employ 25.

The Columbus brewery is also getting more than $7 million for projects to improve efficiency and sustainability. These projects are on top of the $18 million the company spent in 2015 on efficiency gains, such as a system that captures and reuses heat from the brewing process.

In the past 10 years, the Columbus brewery has cut its water usage per barrel of beer by 50 percent, and reduced its usage of natural gas by 25 percent, said Damon Waker, senior resident engineer at the brewery.

“This is all about becoming more and more efficient,” Waker said.

The projects at the brewery started in January and should be complete this year, he said.

The latest measures are part of the $500 million that Anheuser-Busch, owned by AB InBev, will invest across its U.S. operations this year, the company announced Monday, marking an increase compared with recent years. It’s a portion of the $3.7 billion in global capital expenditures that the company had already budgeted for 2017.

AB InBev, headquartered in Belgium, has seen the sales of its flagship suds decline in the U.S. as smaller craft brewers have picked away at its market share in an overall stagnant beer segment. To stem some of that bleeding, AB InBev has bought several craft brewers, including Wicked Weed, of North Carolina, earlier this month.