Steam for beer

When you ask for a “Quilmes” everyone in Argentina knows that you want a beer. In fact, it is the most popular beer in the country with a market share around 75 percent. But the company faced major problems because the demand was pushing the production of beer to the limit. Old equipment was limiting the growth and that is why Quilmes contacted Bombas Grundfos Argentina (BGA).
- Every week we had to make service on the old pumps resulting in many costs and very time consuming, and most importantly: As the boilers were feeding all the plants, every time we stopped the boiler to do maintenance they stopped the whole factory, said Maintenance Chief in Quilmes, Bruno Gonzalez.
Cervecería & Maltería Quilmes was founded in 1890. Today it has eleven factories across the country and almost 4,700 employees. Acquired in 2003 by ABInBev, it expanded its production to bottled water, soda and juices.

Finding the right solution
The Grundfos Salesmen Engineers went to the factory to understand the issue. They checked the current installation to calculate and select the right pump..
They found out that four CR 45-4 with EFF1 would be the best choice.
- The production of beer requires large quantities of steam and to generate this you need three steam boilers. To feed these boilers they used four multistage horizontal pumps, which were old, uneconomical and could not reach the duty point required. That meant not only a waste of energy, but also a great problem with the increasing production, explained Omar Horacio Bulnes, General Manager, Bombas Grundfos de Argentina.


Cutting down on electricity
The team work between Grundfos and Cervecería & Maltería Quilmes’ maintenance division was successful presenting the features of the pumps and the payback analysis to obtain the funds to complete the purchase. The power consumption of the installation decreased from 30 kW to 11 kW for each pump.
- We were able to reduce the power consumption for each pump significantly going from 30 kW to 11 kW for each pump making a saving of around 10,000 Euro per year. This was an excellent opportunity for BGA to keep developing Cerveceria & Malteria Quilmes as a customer, who now considers Grundfos as a full-line supplier, not only in Argentina, but also in their factories in Paraguay, Bolivia and Uruguay, said Mr Bulnes.