A Black Sheep, Anheuser-Busch & Jacksonville

A look inside Anheuser-Busch's economic, environmental and cultural impact involved in operating a Jacksonville-based brewery where 99.6 percent of everything utilized in the manufacturing process is recycled.

<h1>Photos: AB’s local economic impact</h1>

<h1>Anchor Glass Container Corporation</h1>

With as much as 624,000 square feet, the Anchor Glass Container Company is the only glass bottle plant in the State of Florida. Paying between $400,000 to $900,000 a month on energy costs, it’s also one of JEA’s major accounts. Glass making on the site actually dates as far back as the 1926 when Antonio Scalise founded the Tropical Glass and Box Company. Scalise’s clients included Pepsi-Cola of Florida, Dixie Lily Company, and Frostie Root Beer. Daily tours of the plant were also allowed between 10:30am and 4:30pm. By the 1960s, Tropical Glass and Box had been acquired by the Anchor Hocking Glass Corporation. In 1983, Anchor Glass Container was carved out of Anchor Hocking by Wesray Capital Corporation, a private equity pioneer co-founded by William Simon, U.S. Treasury secretary in the Nixon and Ford administrations. Over the last twenty years, employment at Florida’s only glass manufacturing plant has hovered between 235 and 400. Today, it makes 2.7 million beer bottles a day for its only client, Jacksonville’s Anheuser Busch brewery.

<h1>Metal Container Corporation</h1>

Anheuser-Busch subsidiary Metal Container Corporation opened its Ellis Road plant in 1973 to supply the Jacksonville brewery with cans. This operation makes 3 billion cans annually for the brewery and other companies like Pepsi and Coca-Cola. It is currently being expanded to manufacture aluminum bottles for the Jacksonville brewery.

<h1>WestRock</h1> Courtesy of Nassau County

Richmond, VA-based WestRock is the second largest packaging company in the country. WestRock operates a large mill, employing 440, just north of Fernandina Beach’s historic district. The Fernandina Beach facility produces both linerboard and corrugating medium. The linerboard and corrugating medium are used together to make new containerboard for packaging and other uses for many area customers including AB’s Jacksonville brewery.

<h1>North Florida Sales</h1>

North Florida Sales (NFS) is a locally owned AB wholesaler with operations in Jacksonville and Lake City. Employing 250 in Jacksonville, NFS has about 60 percent of the local beer market and distributes AB products to supermarkets, convenience stores, bars, lounges and any customer licensed to sell beer in 11 Northeast Florida counties.

<h1>FEC Intermodal</h1>

Jacksonville’s Florida East Coast Railway (FEC) provides door-to-door intermodal service from AB’s Jacksonville brewery to several South Florida wholesalers. In 2011, FEC completed nearly 8,000 ships of beer and return loads, leading AB to name the 351-mile regional railroad its intermodal carrier of the year.