The Lion Brewery will expand and invest $25 million in a new 250,000 square foot production facility at this building in the Grimes Industrial Park in Pittston Township.
Photo courtesy of The Lion Brewery.
Company to open new production facility in leased Pittston Twp. building
The Lion Brewery is expanding its operations and investing $25 million in a new production facility in the Grimes Industrial Park.
The company Wednesday announced it is leasing a 250,000 square foot building on Sathers Drive in Pittston Township and expects to be fully operational by this time next year.
The privately owned company will continue to operate its more than century old brewery in Wilkes-Barre. The Lion has its own Lionshead brand, but it’s just a small percentage of the total production, said company spokesman Scott Brilliant.
The new facility will be an all-in-one operation with two new, state-of-the-art canning lines, warehouse space for raw material and finished products and a repack area. The company’s administrative offices will relocate there too, Brilliant said.
“The need was there,” Brilliant said.
Jeff Meoni, President and Michael Clarke, CEO said the new can lines are the first in a series of planned investments in the new facility, while continuing to expand capabilities at the current plant.
The Pittston Township facility will have a forecasted output of 40 million cases of brewed and non-brewed cans annually. Each canning line is expected to hire between 40 and 50 new employees in positions from production workers to quality assurance technicians.
“We could be up in the hundreds” when the two lines are running, Brilliant said.
A good portion of the production is for proprietary brands, Brilliant added.
The Lion Brewery, built in 1905, serves the industry as a co-packer with many high-profile customers including Fortune 500 companies, the company said in a press release. It has brewing, keg, glass bottling, and canning capabilities, over 200,000 square feet of warehouse space and a 400-barrel kettle. The brewery operates 24 hours a day, seven days per week.
Since 2015, the Lion has invested over $20 million into building production capabilities at its Wilkes-Barre brewery. The latest investments include a high-speed paper and pressure sensitive labeler and a split deck pasteurizer that can run with or without pasteurization.
Information about the company’s manufacturing operations is available at lionbeverage.com. For job openings, visit lionbrewery.com.
Reach Jerry Lynott at 570-991-6120 or on Twitter @TLJerryLynott.
