New Jamaican beer launched

- Norman Grindley

Director of Operations at Big City Brewing, Deighton Levee, explains the packaging process for Real Rock beer as the bottles are placed on the conveyor belt at the Pechon Street, Kingston, brewery. Automation reduces much of the handling of the product.

Donna Ortega, News Editor

REAL ROCK, a new Jamaican lager beer was launched by Big City Brewing in Kingston on Friday.

The product is likely to retail at $45 per bottle, according to company director Beverly Lopez. "We're still fine-tuning the retail price," she said, "but it will be competitively priced." The outcome of that fine-tuning should set the Real Rock half-way between the price that beer drinkers already pay for Red Stripe and Heineken.

According to managing director of Big City, Peter Wong, they expect to produce some 200,000 cases in the first year and the product will be on the market by the end of this week.

He was responding to questions from the press after a tour of the brewing and packaging process at the company's Pechon Street headquarters in a building that once housed a garment factory. Minimal structural alterations were carried out to fit the equipment.

"We believe that the market is ready for a premium lager Jamaicans can be proud to call their own," Mr. Wong said.

Due to the level of automation of the equipment, the brewery does not require high levels of staff. Some 20 persons are already employed though as production increases that number is expected to grow.

The managing director said that there were plans to export to foreign markets by mid 2002 once Real Rock has been established as a "truly all-Jamaican beer" and the flagship brand for Big City Brewing.

Director of operations, Deighton Levee, told the press that Real Rock is brewed according to classic European tradition - containing only malted barley, hops and water. "No additives or adjuncts are used," he stressed. He told Sunday Business that when it came to the quality of the beer, "There is no doubt. Other brewers use adjuncts such as corn grits or rice to compensate for the cost of the malt, but we use all malt here," he said.

Informal consumer testing through the directors had resulted in positive feedback regarding the taste of the product. "We're at our fifth generation of the formula," he observed as he explained the process which was conducted to improve product quality.

Consumer testing also related well to the name of the new beer, he went on. The red stripe design on the bottle, he responded, when questioned, was not an attempt to align their product with the attributes of their more seasoned rival, but simply a recognition that the colour red attracts the eye, complements the company colours and is widely used by other international beers. "That's all it is from a marketing point of view," he said.

Big City Brewing has been structured to focus solely on brewing and marketing. The sales and distribution of Real Rock will be handled by Kingston Hub Distributors, headed by Beverley Lopez.

For the first few months of operation, Kingston Hub will distribute and sell Real Rock in the Corporate Area, Portmore and the environs of Spanish Town. "This is to ensure that we meet or exceed the service levels of our customers before eventually distributing on a phased-in, islandwide basis," Mr. Levee said. It is hoped that customers coming into downtown Kingston will also place orders directly with Big City or the Kingston Hub.

The premium lager beer is bottled in a 300 ml flint coloured long neck bottle. An environmental impact assessment of non-returnable versus returnable glass bottles led the company to choose a non-returnable, one-way glass bottle.

"Not only is one-way glass more widely accepted by consumers throughout the world, it has less impact on the environment than returnable glass bottles in Jamaica. The pollution of our waterways by effluent generated in the sanitising of returnable glass is much more damaging to the environment than non-returnable glass which may end up in a land fill or recycled and reduced," Mr. Levee said.

Big City is working with JAMPRO and other manufacturers that produce products in one-way glass containers on a recycling programme that will collect and ship the bottles to glass manufacturers to be re-used to make new glass.

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