You can safely say: beer starts here. Without our malt house in Puurs, there would be no Cristal, no Hapkin and no Heineken. That’s right, even the best-selling beer in the world has its origins at our malting plant. A powerful team of 45 colleagues transforms the barley into malt and then ships it worldwide.

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Logo Albert Maltings

Albert Maltings

Albert Maltings

Albert Maltings

Albert Maltings

Albert Maltings

Albert Maltings

Albert Maltings

Albert Maltings

Albert Maltings

Albert Maltings

Our maltings? No small beer

Ready for a bit of number crunching? We soak around 900 tonnes of barley here daily, which results in 800 tonnes of malt ready for transport every day. We then export it to about 30 countries, from Vietnam to South Africa. Of course, we also brew our national beers with it.

From barley to malt

A quick lesson in beer brewing: without a malting process, there will be no tasty beer at the pub. How does it work? Barley arrives from France, the UK, Denmark and many other countries. Recently, we even started growing our own, local, 100% Belgian barley! The barley goes into a large soaking tank to grow and germinate. Then we take it to our germination tank, where it sprouts for another five days. This is the most important step, so we constantly monitor humidity, temperature and many other parameters. Optimal malt quality is precision work, even in these large quantities. On day 7, we dry the malt and ship it worldwide.

Albert Maltings

Albert Maltings

Albert Maltings

Albert Maltings

Albert Maltings

Albert Maltings

Albert Maltings

Albert Maltings

Albert Maltings

Albert Maltings

The party never stops

Our malting plant runs every day of the year. Just try to imagine: every year, 330,000 tonnes of barley arrive at our malting plant by train or boat. That gets transformed into 280,000 tonnes of malt and shipped back to our breweries around the world. Quite impressive, we might boldly say.

The Innovation Hub

Our malt house is known as the innovation hub within the HEINEKEN Company, especially regarding sustainability. The thrust for improvement for people and our planet is virtually unquenchable. Finding ways to reduce energy consumption and minimise the impact of our site are religiously researched here. Our engineers love a challenge and are currently working on a pilot project where we have re-engineered the entire malting process from scratch. More sustainable, cleaner and without compromising on quality.

Albert Maltings

Albert Maltings

Albert Maltings

Albert Maltings

Albert Maltings

Albert Maltings

Albert Maltings

Albert Maltings

Albert Maltings

Albert Maltings

Barley from Belgian soil, more innovative than you think

For many reasons, it was quite difficult to make malt from Belgian barley until recently. Thanks to a fruitful collaboration with Arvesta, we cracked the code, and Belgian farmers can now successfully grow beer barley. This is how we make our delicious Cristal even more local, for instance.

Johan, Sofie and Robbe about working at Alken-Maes

Our malting facility is constantly in motion. Barley comes, and…

Our malting facility is constantly in motion. Barley comes, and malt goes at a colossal rate. I am most proud of our innovations towards sustainability. Our water consumption drops to record lows year after year, not only in Belgium but worldwide. We are true frontrunners in that respect.

Large-scale production and a family atmosphere, that’s our malting house…

Large-scale production and a family atmosphere, that’s our malting house in a nutshell. Here, not only our barley germinates but also our many talents. We have 45 approachable and friendly employees who prioritise freedom. That is possible thanks to streamlined processes and a lot of mutual trust. Malt is becoming increasingly important, one of the reasons why we continue to grow. So this is where you will find a job that is relevant today and tomorrow.

Working at Alken-Maes comes with responsibility. People expect the very…

Working at Alken-Maes comes with responsibility. People expect the very best from us. Fortunately, we can deliver just that. Although we have a lot of individual freedom, we work very well as a team. That way, we constantly learn from each other.

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Behind the scenes

Strategically located between the French barley fields and the port of Antwerp, in an ideal climate for malting. Our malt house has cherry-picked its location. An idyllic sunrise over the water during the first shift makes it perfect.

Production and process operators, technicians, process engineers, silo operators, lab technicians… together, we lay the first building blocks of the beer you will be uncorking soon.

Albert Maltings

Production

Production

Production

Production

Production

Production

Production

Production

Production

Production

So, who works at Albert Maltings?

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