Giant beer vats finally make it to Molson Coors

On Monday, six large vats that had been shipped from Germany finally made it to their destination at the Molson Coors brewery near Toronto’s airport.

The massive beer fermenters were ordered last spring from the Ziemann Group in Germany. They were shipped across the Atlantic in November and arrived in the Port of Hamilton on Nov. 24.

They made the final leg on the backs of six trucks in a slow convoy delayed by snow, cold weather, tight corners, and at least one hydro-line strike.

Leaving the harbour on Jan. 7, the convoy set off at a walking pace, gearing up for some 250 traffic lights and 1,614 service wires. The 50-kilometer trip was originally scheduled to take four days, along secondary roads to avoid low bridges.

It ended up taking more than double that but there was a definite sense of victory among workers when the six trucks, each pulling a vat measuring 45 meters long by nearly eight meters in diameter, and weighing over 43,000 kg, finally pulled up to the Molson Coors facility on Jan. 17.

The new equipment will increase the capacity at Molson’s Toronto brewery by 20 percent.

The move was coordinated by Cambridge Ont.-based Challenger Motor Freight.

Frank DeVries, the man in charge, admitted to the press when the ordeal was over that in the middle of the journey, he felt like it would never end.

“Everyone underestimated how long it would take,” he told The Toronto Star. But he added, “Nothing got damaged and nobody got hurt.”