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News
Hennessy ups investment with €100m bottling plant
Hennessy Cognac has opened a €100 million (US$118m) bottling and logistics plant to reinforce its production capacity.
The Hennessy team has officially opened Pont Neuf
The 26,000sqm plant, called Pont Neuf, is located in Salles d’Angles, an urban area located outside the town of Cognac, and has the capacity to produce 24 million bottles annually. The site will “complement” Hennessy’s La Vignerie premises, located a few miles away
“This new investment demonstrates the long-term vision that guides Hennessy and the LVMH Group as a whole,” said Bernard Arnault, chairman and CEO of parent company LVMH.
“By continually investing in artisanal know-how and the attractiveness of our products everywhere around the world, we make it possible for our Houses to grow and boost employment in France, in their native regions.
“It is this virtuous circle, which integrates both international reach and local development, that we wish to continue pursuing.”
Seventy people will be employed at the site, but this figure is set to increase to 110 “over time”. Its completion follows 24 months of preliminary assessments and a further 24-month construction phase.
Pont Neuf features new team structures, cutting-edge equipment, “sophisticated” traceability systems and a high-speed bottling line that can produce up to 240,000 bottles per day.
“Pont Neuf is much more than a strategic site: it stands for the company’s vision and is a symbol of what we like to call the ‘house spirit’,” commented Barnard Peillon, president of Hennessy.
“This new investment sustains the chain of excellence that began with our 1,600 winegrowing partners, and continues with the whole of the Hennessy community to deliver Cognacs of which we are all proud.”
Pont Neuf is also said to champion “green building” and is aiming to achieve High Quality Environmental (HQE) certification. The site will recycle 92% of waste.
In a statement announcing the news, Hennessy said it is on-track to record sales of eight million cases in 2018 – making it the world’s largest Cognac brand.
Hennessy has previously admitted by constrained by supply, but the brand managed to record volume sales growth of 8% in the first nine months of this year.