Topvar Beer Brewery Tour 1991

At the end of the 19th century, there were three breweries in the town of Topoľčany, Slovakia but no detailed information on two of them has been preserved. Only the most famous brewery, Topvar history is documented.

The construction of the malt house and gradually also the brewery began on August 17, 1958 and was divided into three stages. The first stage, the construction of a malting plant with a capacity of 16,800 tons of malt per year, was completed in 1960 and the production of Pilsner-type malt was started almost immediately. The second stage of the construction was the construction of the brewery itself.

The first Topvar beer was tapped symbolically on Labor Day on May 1, 1964 . The capacity of the brewery at that time reached the level of 345,000 hl of beer per year. The third stage of construction involved increasing the production capacity to 500,000 hl of beer per year and the construction of a specialized vocational brewing school with a capacity of 120 apprentices. It was completed in 1966.

Topvar soon gained popularity. The company has contracts with almost 50 countries around the world.
They also brewed beer from Topoľčian malt in countries such as Brazil, Venezuela, Japan, Switzerland, Angola and Germany.

Topvar Topoľčany Brewery was a well-equipped company with modern equipment. In the 1990s, about 1 million bottles were shipped from there every week, which means more than 50 million bottles a year . Beer has been awarded several prizes for quality at home and abroad. In 1994, Topvar was privatized, resp. changed its form to a joint-stock company, which, paradoxically, did not harm the company, but helped. Despite the change, the brewery grew and became more and more successful.

In 1998, Topvar represented Slovakia at the Olympics in Nagano, he was also the official representative of the Slovak brewing industry at the Expo 1998 exhibition in Lisbon and later at the Expo 2000 exhibition in Hanover. It should also be mentioned that in 2000 Topvar was the official supplier of beer for the Slovak House during the Summer Olympics in Sydney . In 2002, the most successful year, 697,000 hl of beer were produced. Unfortunately, every story ends once and gradually the story of the Topoľčiansky brewery also ended.
Due to the popularity of beer, naturally, offers to buy it began to appear, and in 2006, the South African group SABMiller bought Topvar. In February 2010, the entire beer production moved from Topoľčany to Šariš. Only the distribution and administrative center remained in the Topvar buildings . Gradually, the brewery’s buildings began to be demolished in 2015.

Article written by Ondrej Godál.