On 18 April 1975, Heineken officially opened its new brewery in Zoeterwoude, a vast industrial site built to replace the much smaller Rotterdam brewery. The difference in scale was enormous: the old Rotterdam site covered just 4 hectares, while the new Zoeterwoude brewery was developed on 80 hectares — roughly twenty times larger.
At the moment of opening, Zoeterwoude started with a production capacity of 3.8 million hectolitres. Today, that figure has grown to around 16 million hectolitres, showing just how dramatically the brewery expanded over time. What began as a new large-scale Dutch production site became one of the true industrial powerhouses of the Heineken network.
The opening of Zoeterwoude marked far more than a simple relocation. It symbolized Heineken’s shift from traditional urban brewing to modern, highly efficient, large-scale production. Built to supply both the domestic market and a growing international export system, Zoeterwoude became one of the key engines behind Heineken’s worldwide expansion. From this site, beer production helped support a network that now reaches around 180 export countries.
As the largest brewery in Europe, Zoeterwoude stands as one of the most important physical symbols of Heineken’s transformation from a Dutch brewer into a global brewing company.