Devans Modern Breweries Ltd. is thepioneer of quality malt manufacturing in India and also stands tall amongst the oldest home-grown beer producers of the country. Today, DeVANS is a name to reckon with in the liquor trade, with a bagful of award-winning iconic beer brands as well as quality malt that is lapped up by major Indian spirit manufacturers.

DeVANS has had a chequered history. It was founded by Dewan Gian Chand who started his career as a journalist and entered the liquor trade in J&K in 1942 with the opening of two wholesales at Jammu and Srinagar. The present company came into existence in 1961 with the setting up a liquor unit at Jammu and was initially known as Kashmir Fruit & Chemical Industries which name was later changed to Devans Modern Breweries Ltd. after the start of beer manufacturing in 1967, initially with just 2000 bottles a day filled with a soda bottle filling machine!The company went in for substantial expansion in 1973 and the production was raised to 5000 cases daily. Beer production was raised gradually at the unit to over 1 lac bottles daily till this brewery was shut down in 2014 after the commissioning of a greenfield brewery at Samba.  The new brewery at Samba has a capacity of 39600 KL and is equipped to bottle beer in 650ml and 330ml bottles, 500ml and 330ml cans and draught beer kegs of 20 litre and 30 litres. It is also the only brewery in the country filling beer in 5 litre cans and kegs.

In between, another greenfield brewery was set up at Kotputli(Rajasthan) in 2006 which at that time was one of India’s biggest breweries and has a present capacity of 75000 KL. This brewery had many firsts to its credit as far as Indian breweries were concerned. It was the first brewery in the country to receive malt in bulk rather than in bags. It was also the first brewery equipped with a German canning line as all previous canning lines were of Italian origin. A number of process innovations were also carried out in the unit in order to increase its efficiency.

Devans was the first brewery in India to start production of strong beer with Rajdhani beer. RAJGURU was launched in 1983 with the original mascot illustration(of Godfather) but soon ran into trade mark issues with the GURU brand of Mohan Goldwater Breweries. Though DeVANS successfully defended its trade mark in the case which went right up to the Supreme Court, a conscious decision was taken in 1984 to change the name from Rajguru to Godfather which not only sounded better but also suited well with the mascot illustration. It went on to acquire iconic stature and has been winning awards regularly in the country for its quality.

A new distillery has just recently been commissioned at Samba, with a capacity of 4,500 KL of malt spirits and 35,280 KL ofliquor in order to meet the demand of the company’s malt spirit.The company has also startedcontract bottling of its beer brands in Arunachal Pradesh and Jharkhand to further boost its production capacity. Our future expansion would be purely through production tie up and we have planned for at least two more such tie ups before this year is out in order to be ready for the next year.

From an initial capacity of 2000 bottle per day we certainly have come a long way. “ We aim to sell 8M cases of beer this year and cross the milestone of 10M cases during 2023-24!”

DeVANS has always invested heavily in its production facilities in order to increase production and improve the quality of its products. We focus completely on the quality of our products and ensure that batch to batch deviations are minimised. “We also spend substantially on the development of new products which has resulted in the launch of our brands in new categories. We are the only brewery in the country with a beer having 8% abv, the highest allowed in the country in GODFATHER SUPER 8. It is also the only brewery in the country with a strong Belgian style wheat beer- SIX FIELDS CULT. In addition to GODFATHER LEGENDARY, we also have quality premium brands in SIX FIELDS BLANCHE and KOTSBERG PILS. Our brands have regularly been winning blind tasting competitions acrossall the major competitions in the country. We are also developing new products, which should be in the market early next year. We are also exporting our beers to a number of developed countries.”

“The consumer nowadays is willing to experiment with new products and products like mead and hard seltzers are getting encouraging response from the market. We are also moving with the market and hope to market new RTD varieties in the liquor range be the end of this year. As already indicated, we are also developing new beer variants which should be available in the market next year.”

 

Lopamudra Ganguly.