“The current Heidelberg Cincinnati facility will become the sales office, and there will be no changes to our sales structure,” the statement added. “All operations associates will be offered the opportunity to transition to the Moraine facility.”
This news outlet obtained a recent email sent from Chris Rammel, president of Heidelberg Distributing, to company employees in the Cincinnati area.
The email states in part that the plan is to have all Southwestern Ohio deliveries originate from the Dryden Road facility by Oct. 2.
Credit: Dayton Daily News
Credit: Dayton Daily News
The email also says that the space of the large Moraine warehouse is underutilized at the moment, currently at 23% capacity. It also says the three facilities now serving this part of the state are only some 48 miles apart at most.
The company is offering union-represented employees affected by the change “expedited negotiations,” the email also says.
Through a colleague, Rammel declined to comment further.
In October 2021, the then-owners of Heidelberg Distributing agreed to sell their business to Redwood Capital Investments of Maryland.
Terms of the transaction were not disclosed at the time, but a beer industry newsletter put the value of the deal at close to $1 billion.
At that time, the business had more than 1,600 employees, with 717 suppliers serving 26,000 retail accounts across Ohio and Kentucky.
The family-owned company started with German-born brewer Albert Vontz, who arrived in Cincinnati in 1907. After the Prohibition era, he drove a truck for the Heidelberg Brewery in nearby Covington, Ky. He kept the Heidelberg name when the brewery went out of business.
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