Adrian D. Garcia

agarcia@coloradoan.com

Nate Turner is one of two people at New Belgium Brewing Co. who worked their way from the bottling line of the once small craft brewer to the board room of what has become a nationally recognized brand.

"There was a certain point in time, when I sat in my office in the early 2000s and could think and name every beer we'd ever produced, which was probably about 20 beers or something like that. And then it just started to go exponential," Turner said.

In its 25th year, New Belgium's growth will again be jolted as dozens of new workers start releasing beer from a new East Coast brewery in Asheville, North Carolina. The expansion positions New Belgium to face growing competition but also poses questions about how the Fort Collins company will preserve the laid-back, value-driven culture that made it both a local icon and the nation’s fourth-largest craft brewery.

Jeff Lebesch and Kim Jordan opened New Belgium in 1991 in their Fort Collins basement. From day one, the co-founders incorporated their passion for cycling, sustainability, workplace balance and craft beer into the company.

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New Belgium held tight to those core values through the years as thousands of breweries sprang up across the nation. The Fort Collins brewer is now sandwiched between craft upstarts and major beer manufacturers like Anheuser-Busch and MillerCoors.

“The craft space is becoming extremely competitive, so we definitely continue to compete aggressively," Turner said. "We've talked about diversification into different beer segments, different alcohol segments and different consumer segments."

What the employee-owned company is not talking about is finding a buyer, despite a recent trend of consolidation in the brewing industry and a December Reuters report stating New Belgium was exploring a sale.

"It was total speculation. We're doing our due diligence as a board and somebody decided to run with that," said New Belgium CEO Christine Perich. "There's a part of me that wants to reassure, and there's a part of me that doesn't want to perpetuate a story."

In October, Perich took the handle bars of New Belgium from the company's co-founder Kim Jordan. Perich joined the company in 2000 and used her financial background to help New Belgium scale up.

She is overseeing the brewery's $140 million expansion to Asheville. The North Carolina brewery is expected to open in March with about 80 employees. Fourteen workers so far relocated from New Belgium's brewery in Fort Collins — “The Mothership.”

"It's a very big deal," Perich said. "It signifies our ability to be national. That was the purpose of building Asheville. We couldn't service the entire U.S. out of Fort Collins. So it's the signal that we can go ahead and fill out our national footprint."

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New Belgium distributes in 41 states as well as Canada, Sweden, Japan and South Korea. The company started selling in Hawaii in February and plans to add New York and New Jersey to its list later this year.

At full build-out, the 127,000-square-foot Asheville brewery could produce up to 500,000 barrels of beer for sale in the eastern United States. The New Belgium brewery in Fort Collins will continue serving the western half of the country.

In 2015, New Belgium sold 914,063 barrels of beer through a variety of offerings varying from flagship brand Fat Tire and small, collaboration batches like Transatlantique Kriek. With the Asheville expansion the brewery is poised to break the 1-million-barrel mark.

Replicating an icon

In North Carolina, New Belgium is working to get the same respect and trust that it has built up over two and half decades in Fort Collins.

There are 22 breweries in the county where Asheville is located, The Asheville Citizen-Times reports, plus another 24 in the surrounding area, including major craft brewers like Longmont-based Oskar Blues Brewery and California-based Sierra Nevada Brewing Co.

"We certainly have a very strong local bias, but we have a lot of companies that came from outside of North Carolina and really made an effort to contribute to the community," said Kendra Penland, executive director of the Asheville Brewers Alliance.

Some neighborhoods near New Belgium's new site were initially concerned about how the brewer might impact them, but most residents are welcoming, Penland said.

New Belgium is building on a brownfield site and playing a key role in revitalizing the historical River Arts District near downtown Asheville, the city's Mayor Esther Manheimer said. "They've jumped right in as community partners and worked very closely with the city to do needed improvements."

Still, barriers remain to New Belgium recreating the impact it has had on Fort Collins. While Asheville encourages sustainability and outdoor recreation, the city does not have the same cycling-friendly infrastructure New Belgium might be used to in Colorado.

"This is an old city designed for when people rode a horse and drove a cart," Manheimer said. "It's harder to retrofit the streets for bikes."

Bike rides are one of the activities Penelope Gilliland uses while introducing New Belgium's vibe to distributors and other industry guests from around the country.

"It's really hard to explain what New Belgium is about unless you come here and are immersed in it," Gilliland said. "A lot of these distributors have a book of 500 brands that they are representing. And, obviously, we want to be top share of mind for them."

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New Belgium will start with three employees in Asheville telling the company' story to industry insiders. The company is still waiting to see the vibe its North Carolina site gives off and how to integrate that with the overall brand.

Asheville has the benefit of "taking 25 years of learning and turning into something amazing," said Jennifer Vervier. The site will be able to create its own culture using New Belgium's core values as a guide.

Vervier played a key role in selecting Asheville for expansion as New Belgium's director of sustainability and strategic development.

"We are really fortunate with our co-founders. Before they ever started a brewery they had an efficient background in social work," Vervier said. "I feel why we've been successful is because of our core values, not that we've been successful despite them."

Vervier is exploring new routes to success. She's heading up the company's efforts to open a small, pilot brewery in Denver. That brewery is slated to open in April 2017 and allow New Belgium to get closer to customers and fans. If the pilot is successful, New Belgium could add other sites throughout the country, she said.

"We've proven we achieve whatever we set our minds to," Vervier said. "What will the next 25 years hold? I don't think we know yet, but we're excited for it."

This article was updated from an earlier version to correct New Belgium CEO Christine Perich's start date. She joined the company in 2000.

Growth & data reporter Adrian D. Garcia can be reached at 970-224-7835 or Twitter.com/adriandgarcia.