FDBusiness.com

Two years ago St Peter’s Brewery launched Without®, the world’s first 0.0% alcohol craft beer, which provided a huge sales boost and turned the English brewery business back to profit. Now, to cope with the huge demand for its three-product-strong Without® brand, the Suffolk-based brewery has just cut the ribbon on its brand new, state-of-the-art bottling line.

The new bottling line, along with the purchase of further land to expand the brewery, with allow St Peter’s to quadruple production.

St Peter’s Without® consists of three products: Without® Original, Without® Gold and Without® Organic and now makes up a staggering 30% of the brewery’s overall sales, accounting for a huge 10% of the overall no/low drink market. “The success of Without® has been beyond our expectations,” says Steve Magnall, CEO at St Peter’s Brewery. “We knew when we were developing it that the British drinks market was in dire need of a decent, flavoursome and full-bodied zero alcohol beer, but we never expected take up or demand to be so high. It is literally flying off the shelf. Without® has, quite simply, turned the brewery around and taken us into profit in less than two years.”

Steve Magnall elaborates: “With the new bottling line now up and running, capacity at the brewery can grow from 4 million bottles a year to 16 million to meet the growing demand for the product.” Plus. with additional land now secured, St Peter’s will now be able to brew more and bottle more.

With around 25% of British adults not drinking alcohol for lifestyle, health or religious reasons, as well as increased Government pressure to reduce drink driving limits, there has never been a better time to produce alcohol-free beer.

“Our Without® brand is sold in all the major supermarkets and is incredibly popular. There’s a huge demand for alcohol-free beer and because we got in there early, we are leading the way,” he adds.