diageo opened the first phase of its €700 million Kildare brewery on Monday at Littleconnell outside Newbridge, putting the company’s next major Irish brewing site into operation after a plan first announced in 2022. The opening gives the group a new base for ales and lagers and starts the move away from St James’s Gate in Dublin.
The first phase represents almost €300 million of investment and is part of a near €1 billion programme running from 2020 to 2029. At capacity, the brewery will produce two million hectolitres, enough to make it Diageo’s second largest brewing operation in Ireland after St. James’s Gate.
Littleconnell Opens With 50 Jobs
50 people will work at the brewery, which sits on a greenfield site and uses advanced brewing and process technologies to reduce energy and water use. It will be powered entirely by renewable energy, a design that keeps operating costs and resource use lower as output rises.
Rockshore, Harp, Smithwick’s and Kilkenny are among the beers being moved from St James’s Gate to Kildare, along with licensed beers such as Carlsberg. That shift frees Dublin production space while giving Diageo a larger brewing footprint outside the capital.
Guinness 0.0 Plans For 2025
Diageo has already secured permission for a further €400 million investment on the 40-acre site to build a second brewery for Guinness and Guinness 0.0, with work expected to begin this year. Sir Dave Lewis said, “Today Diageo is proud to unveil our new state of the art brewery at Littleconnell, part of our €1 billion investment in Ireland. How fitting that it’s in County Kildare, the birthplace of Arthur Guinness.”
Micheál Martin opened the brewery and called the project “a powerful vote of confidence in Ireland and in our future as a world‑leading, sustainable food and drink exporter... underlining the central role Ireland plays within the company’s global brewing network.” Jenny Melia said the site is “a fantastic endorsement of our skills and capabilities in this sector, and will drive export growth,” while also calling it “a lighthouse project” for new technologies that reduce energy and water use.
The immediate test is production ramp-up: if the Kildare site moves the planned brands smoothly, Diageo gains room to expand Guinness and Guinness 0.0 next door without waiting on a separate site. For customers, the change sits behind the labels on shelves; for the company, it is the point where a long Irish investment plan starts to turn into throughput.
