In its new brewery in Brazil, Heineken produces up to five million hectolitres of beer per year. Here, the company brews top-quality pure-malt beers and uses four Krones lines to fill them into cans and glass bottles, both returnable and non-returnable. This new facility marks an important milestone for Heineken’s presence in Brazil and is a beacon of sustainability.

Passos has a population of just over 110,000, but quite a lot has been happening here since Heineken started building its new brewery. The city is located in the state of Minas Gerais in the south-east of Brazil, a region with abundant water resources. The Rio Grande is not far away. It is the company’s first greenfield brewery in Brazil. According to Heineken, the project represents one of the largest investments in this region, totalling more than 400 million euros. 

A premium location for a premium beer

The choice of Passos as the location for the new brewery was the result of a meticulous selection process, as Reinaldo Franco explains: “We had three decisive factors: good access to road and rail routes, the availability of top-quality water, and a well-trained workforce. We found all of these in Passos, plus good relations with the local authorities.

The production site supplies the Brazilian beer market’s premium segment with Heineken and Amstel beers, both pure-malt brands brewed in line with the company’s own purity law. Only malt, water, hops and yeast may be used for making them, nothing else. In its current stage of completion, the facility boasts an annual production output of five million hectolitres of beer, with ample space for expansion.

The new facility is also a beacon of sustainability. Throughout the sector, Heineken is well-known for its ambitious goals in this regard, and its plant in Passos is once more setting high standards for efficiency and environmental stewardship. The brewery operates entirely on renewable energy: Hydro-electric power and photo-voltaic systems are used to generate electricity, and biomass boilers produce the thermal energy needed. Water consumption was once again substantially reduced to an amount even lower than in the already stringent Heineken standards. Heineken’s sustainability strategy also includes social and environmental projects in the region, plus of course jobs. The brewery has created around 350 new jobs, with 60 per cent of these given to local residents. 

Krones supplied all the filling equipment for the new facility, four lines in all: one for cans, two for 0.33-liter non-returnable longneck glass bottles and one for 0.66-liter returnable glass bottles. More than 400 containers were needed to ship the machines to Brazil and then onward to Passos by truck. “You can’t imagine the commotion when the four lines arrived here in an endless series of trucks and containers. You see, Passos isn’t really that big, so people were very curious,” recalls the brewery’s director Reinaldo Franco.

Why was Krones awarded the contract? Reinaldo Franco gives three reasons: cost advantage, technology and a mutually supportive relationship. “Krones and Heineken in Brazil can look back on many years of fruitful cooperation. We knew that we’d always be able to rely on Krones and in a big project like this you definitely need a strong partnership. Krones met all our requirements for the technical equipment and their price was spot-on as well.” A high level of flexibility in the canning line was crucially important for Heineken, as Senior Packing Manager Luis Felipe Zuin Mandra points out: “We produce all the formats commonly used in the Brazilian market. That’s why a smart, flexible canning line with short make-ready times at can change-overs was imperative for us.” Intuitive, user-friendly operator interfaces and visualisations are also essential for the operating staff, he emphasises and adds: “We need lines equipped with effective digital technology for efficient control, for recording data and for data-based analysis of the line’s performance. Those were our requirements, and they were fully met.”

Energy and water consumption were further important criteria, resulting from the group’s high sustainability standards. Reinaldo Franco also highlights the benefits of running the pasteuriser and bottle washer with hot water instead of steam: “It increases workplace safety because there’s less pressure in the pipes.” Krones prefers water for all its machines, not least because water permits better temperature control, which in turn raises energy efficiency.

Canning line for various formats, rated at 120,000 cans per hour, with reference to a 0.355-liter format

• Pressant Universal 1A depalletiser
• Modulfill filler and a can lid feed unit from the new Krones subsidiary CSW
• LinaFlex pasteuriser
• Variopac Pro FS packer (for shrink packs)
• Palettiser Modulpal Pro 1AD and a double-module Robobox T-GS

The first beer was brewed and filled into the tanks in July 2025. The canning line was then started up in August, followed by acceptance-testing for the various can formats. The returnable glass line was next in October, with the first line for longneck glass bottles starting up in November. All four lines have been up and running since February 2026. Reinaldo Franco is pleased that the project’s time schedule was kept: “The lines are producing, we’re dispatching a lot of beer.”