Ambev Brewery inaugurated the Center for Innovation and Technology, CIT, at the Technology Park of UFRJ, in Rio de Janeiro. With an investment of R $ 180 million, it occupies more than 15 thousand square meters and has a staff of 80 people, with more than ten masters-brewers. The idea is that innovations be created in it involving beers, packaging and labels that will later be applied in the market. Still in its period of tests, it was in him that Skol Hops was elaborated. Awarded at the World Beer Awards 2018, it is now marketed in Pernambuco and will soon be available in the markets of São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro. Check out below excerpts from the interview given by Daniel Baumann, CIT director, in an interview with Meio & Mensagem during the inauguration of the center.

Marketing and innovation

“Ambev’s marketing and innovation area go hand in hand. Through our areas of marketing and market intelligence we do more than 30 searches per month on needs, trends, gaps and everything the consumer is looking for. We have a very intense agenda with the marketing team to be able to transform every idea, of different types of raw material, into product reality that will meet the consumer’s desire. Our main role is to diversify what we have been putting in the market, with different styles, connecting with the surveys, to provide a product that pleases the consumer. ”

Relevance of CIT

“We have a center that coordinates the other six which is what is in Leuven, Belgium. But this is our most modern, well-equipped center when compared to the others we have in Europe, Central America, South Africa and Australia. With them, our role is to be extremely connected with what is happening in the world. Innovation is all about information speed, with anticipation of consumer desires. We have to anticipate and create trends, this is the main point of innovation. ”

Sustainability

“More and more we are going to create useful and easy-to-reuse packaging that will transform the world for the better. The equation for this is to use technology. We always think of how to make packaging more resistant, use the highest percentage of recycled material, in a way that packaging is an important vehicle to bring the product to the consumer. ”

Rio de Janeiro

“It is important to be in this place, inserted in the Technological Park, with other leading companies. We have a partnership and a possibility near the academic center of UFRJ. It is important for Ambev, UFRJ and Brazil. We can unite ideas with science, transforming into the future. This synergy, this composition of these elements, was the perfect choice to place our center in Rio. ”

Operation

“Today everything that is released is technology, even if the consumer does not notice it sometimes. Everything we are going to put on the market, from a new product to a packaging, is born within an innovation center. And this in partnership with the market research that we have developed, with marketing. It is created here and then replicated to industrial scale, to become a market product. “