New Belgium Brewing joins MicroStar’s Pooled Keg Program, touts its efficiency and eco-friendliness

In order to benefit from a more sustainable, flexible and cost-efficient keg supply chain solution, New Belgium Brewing Co., the fourth largest craft brewer, has chosen MicroStar Logistics to meet its nationwide keg needs under a long-term partnership agreement.

“New Belgium was founded in Ft. Collins, Colo., in 1991 with a mission to craft our favorite beers and prove that business can be a force for good,” said Steve Fechheimer, New Belgium’s CEO. “In 1996, another Colorado company, MicroStar Logistics, was born from the idea that a pooled-keg model could empower brewers to work together to be more cost-efficient and sustainable than they could be by owning their own kegs. Over the following two decades, both of our companies have grown dramatically thanks to a common commitment to sustainability, quality, innovation and people. This new partnership with our friends at MicroStar, and the environmental benefits that will result, is another step forward in our unwavering focus to be a force for good.”

“We have admired New Belgium, and enjoyed more than our fair share of their beers, for over two decades and are incredibly proud to support their people and their operations for the decades to come,’” said MicroStar’s President and CEO, Michael Hranicka. “It’s been in part thanks to New Belgium that we’ve continued to ramp up our investments throughout our operations … particularly in people, technology and quality. These investments benefit MicroStar’s entire customer community and also position us to support the largest, most sophisticated breweries in the country.”

New Belgium will now benefit from MicroStar’s dense network of kegs and achieve dramatic sustainability benefits compared to the traditional owned-keg model. By sharing a pool of kegs rather than owning their own, over 600 leading brewers reduce their collective carbon footprint by over 3 million kg of CO2e annually (the equivalent amount of CO2e emitted by nearly 3 million pounds of coal) based on a study by Thinkstep, a leading global sustainability software and services company.