‘The SpaceX of beverages’: Massive new Columbia brewery celebrates opening
State and local officials on Thursday formally celebrated the opening of one of the largest economic development projects in the history of Richland County.
Mark Anthony Brewing officially cut the ribbon Thursday on a massive $490 million brewery at 3160 Shop Road in the Pineview Industrial Park. Mark Anthony is the maker of the wildly popular White Claw Hard Seltzer, as well as Cayman Jack and other beverages.
The facility, which has been in operation for several months, will employ more than 300 people. Republican Gov. Henry McMaster was among those who were on hand for Thursday’s ceremonial celebration.
“We are delighted to have (Mark Anthony Brewing) as a part of our family, and we are delighted to be a part of your family. We are looking forward to more and more. This is a great, great day in South Carolina with a great, great company,” McMaster said.
Mark Anthony Brewing is the fourth-largest brewer in the U.S., according to information provided by the company. It was founded in 1972 as a one-person import wine business, and over a half-century it has grown into a company that describes itself as “a private, family-owned, entrepreneurial drinks company, built from the ground up by thinking differently, innovating, and doing the unexpected.”
The company said in a statement that the Columbia plant “is purposely designed and built to keep up with the explosive demand for White Claw Hard Seltzer, a brand that has completely transformed the U.S. beverage industry.”
The massive Mark Anthony facility, which is more than 1.3 million square feet and has the capacity to make 80 million cases of drinks each year, is a high-tech mix of machinery and manpower, with laser-guided vehicles, robotics and humans working alongside one another.
Mark Anthony Brewing founder and CEO Anthony von Mandl said the Shop Road factory is the largest and most technologically advanced brewery built in the U.S. in the last quarter century. He said the state-of-art facility is the “SpaceX of beverages,” a reference to Elon Musk’s space exploration enterprise.
And, he added, the drinks taste good.
“The quality and taste of what we are making here in South Carolina are simply unmatched,” von Mandl said, adding that the plant’s technology allows it to make drinks with “the purest fermented alcohol base in the world.”
The Mark Anthony Brewing facility was a key win for Richland County’s economic development team. It was part of a record-setting year of announced investment for the county back in 2020, when more than $600 million in projects were announced.
Richland County Council Chairman Overture Walker said he thinks the county and Mark Anthony will continue to have a fruitful relationship throughout the coming years.
“Today, we commit to continuing our promise to be a place where Mark Anthony Brewing is successful and prosperous,” Walker said. “I’m optimistic that, 10 years from now, Mark Anthony Brewing will look back and realize that the selection of Richland County in South Carolina is one of the best decisions they’ve ever made.”
