Ursus to open small brewery and restaurant on Cluj factory premises

Ursus Breweries will open a mini brewery on the premises of its old factory in Cluj and it has already started to partially demolish the existing buildings on the site. The mini brewery will serve the restaurant that will be opened on the site, called “Fabrica de bere” (The beer factory). Ursus will invest more than EUR 1 million into this project and hopes to inaugurate the restaurant until late May. This will be a unique project in the mother company Sab Miller's portfolio, according to Gary Whitlie, the president of Ursus Breweries. “To maintain the tradition of beer production in Cluj, the company decided to keep the old factory”, said Diana Klush of Ursus Breweries. The brewery will serve only the bar and several restaurants in Cluj. In mid-November last year, Ursus Breweries announced it would shut down the brewery in Cluj-Napoca and let go its 150 workers. The company said the decision was triggered by the declining beer sales in Romania in recent years. The factory in Cluj was opened in 1878. Irina Popescu, irina.popescu@romania-insider.com