Golden Guinea Breweries has resumed production. The brewery now has an installed capacity of 1.15m bottles per day or 2m hectolitres annually. The company owns the Golden Guinea Lager and Eagle stout brands and has the rights to produce Holsten’s Bergedorf premium lager beer and Bergedorf Malta in Nigeria under licence.

Update 18/04/19: Golden Guinea Breweries has issued a statement that it has not, in fact, resumed operations: “The company stands by the disclosure and publication issued to the public via the issuer’s portal on resuming operations before the end of the second quarter of 2019.”

Golden Guinea Breweries was founded in 1962 and originally named Independence Brewery. It is situated in Umuahia, Abia State. The company introduced Eagle Stout to the market in 1967 and also produces Golden Guinea lager. Between 1967 and 1970 production was seriously limited by the Nigerian Civil War and in 2003 the brewery closed down after a fire.

In April 2017, the company received a N3.6bn ($10m) grant package from the Nigerian Export Import Bank, NEXIM. The loan facility was obtained by Nigerian investors Pan Marine Investments. It has a tenure of six years with an 18 months moratorium on interest and 24 months on principal with an interest of 14% per annum.

In June 2018, Pan Marine Investments announced Golden Guinea Breweries would re-enter the Nigerian beer market following its revamp. The company said its new equipment has an installed capacity of 48,000 bottles per hour, which represents 1.15m bottles per day, twice the installed capacity of the old equipment. It equates to a capacity of 2m hectolitres per year and is claimed to be more than double what competitors at Nigerian Breweries’ Ama, Enugu brewery and International Breweries’ (AB InBev) Onitsha brewery can produce.

Abia is in the south eastern part of Nigeria. The company has said, “our distribution is not going to focus only on the Eastern States but will be distributing our drinks across Nigeria. We must ensure our drinks are in Lagos and other states in the West, North and Southern Nigeria, while also consolidating our premier position in the East.” As part of its initial business plan Golden Guinea Breweries also forecast exports of around $4m annually.

Pan Marine Investments Limited, the core investor in Golden Guinea Breweries, plans to relist the company on the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE).