Quilmes
Location	Quilmes, Argentina
Owner(s)	AmBev (91%) QUINSA (9%)
Year opened	1888
Annual production	15 million hectolitres
Active beers
Name Type Quilmes Cristal Lager Quilmes light Light Lager Quilmes Bock Bock Quilmes Stout Stout Quilmes Red Lager Red Lager Iguana Light Lager Imperial Pilsner Andes Lager Bieckert Norte Pilsner Palermo Lager Liberty Non-alcoholic beer

Cervecería y maltería Quilmes is an Argentine Brewery founded in 1888 in Quilmes, Buenos Aires Province, by Otto Bemberg, a German immigrant.

The company quickly started growing and in the 1920s it was already the most popular beer in Buenos Aires. Since then, it has become something of a national symbol, and has 75% of the beer market share in Argentina. It sponsors the Argentina national football team, and the colours of its labels are Argentina's light blue and white.

As of 2005, Quilmes has plants in Quilmes, Zárate, Tres Arroyos, Corrientes, Tucumán and Mendoza. It is also exported to Perú, Ecuador, Mexico, Honduras, Costa Rica, Puerto Rico, USA, Spain, Dominican Republic, France, UK, Italy, Australia and several other countries. It sells a yearly total of around 17 million hL of beer and 8 million hL of soft drinks and others.

[edit] QUINSA

The international company Quilmes Industrial S.A. (QUINSA) is a Luxembourg-based holding that controls Quilmes, and franchises PepsiCo's products, including Gatorade and Tropicana, in Argentina and Uruguay. QUINSA owns 30% of Quilmes, with 53% of the voting rights within the corporation.

In 2002, Brazilian company AmBev bought 37.5% of Quilmes S.A. in an agreement that gave AmBev control of the Quilmes brand in Argentina. The merger of the two companies created, for a brief time, the world's third largest beverage producer.

In 2004 Ambev and Interbrew merged to form a new company named InBev, integrating Quilmes into the portfolio of the former. InBev became the second largest brewery company in the world, later to become the largest when it merged with Anheuser-Busch in 2008 to create Anheuser-Busch InBev.

In 2006 AmBev increased its share of the company to over 91%, effectively taking full control of the Quilmes name^[1].

[edit] External links

• Official site (Spanish)
• Current activities (Spanish)
• Quilmes' History (Spanish)
• QUINSA (English)

[edit] References