(Jamaica Gleaner) Close to half of Red Stripe’s beer manufacturing capacity is now idle, and the plant at Spanish Town Road has cut production time from seven days to five amid falling sales.

“The last couple of years have been challenging, although within the past two years we have seen some stabilisation, but we need to deliver huge volumes and that has been down 40 per cent in the last couple of years,” said Cedric Blair, supply director at Red Stripe, just before a tour of the plant on Wednesday.

“It’s really a challenging environment to work in and what has result from the decline in volume is that we have huge idle capacity, in excess of 44 per cent,” he said.

Red Stripe is now looking to more robust performance in the economy to propel sales volume and to put back its idle capacity into production at the plant, which sits on a 90-acre spread in Kingston’s industrial zone.

“We have huge capacity that we would like to be able to use,” said Blair.