Heineken has opened its largest production facility in Mexico after a €400 million investment.

The greenfield facility has a capaqcity of 5 million hectoliters a year and has created 500 new jobs on site and 1,500 indirect positions to boot.

The premises are such that expansion is possible in the medium term.

The Mexican branch contributed 16% to the sales, 12% to the turnover and 15% to the profits of the Dutch brewery even before the new bottling plant went into operation.

The expansion project encompasses six lines, four of which were supplied and commissioned by KHS.

These comprise two glass lines for 355-milliliter non-returnable bottles, one for 325-milliliter returnable bottles – all with a capacity of up to 40,000 bottles per hour each – and a fourth line for up to 28,000 947-milliliter returnable or non-returnable bottles an hour.

The Meoqui site produces two types of beer, six beer styles and 13 different brands, not just Heineken but also Tecate, Dos Equis and Indio, among others.

In its first few months of operation more than 1.2 million hectolitres were filled into glass bottles and packaged.