Obolon

Kyiv’s third brewery poured its first beer on 8 May 1980. It was built to a design drawn up with Czech specialists, in time for the Moscow Olympics, and took the name Obolon in the early 1980s. Under its director Oleksandr Slobodian the staff leased the business in 1990, and in 1992 it became the first company privatised in independent Ukraine. In 2008 the Kyiv plant brewed 111.1 million decalitres, which the company counts as a European record for a single brewery. Obolon is still Ukrainian-owned, through holding companies and Slobodian himself, and runs the country’s largest maltings at Chemerivtsi. In Germany its Obolon Svitle, a pale lager of 4.5%, sells through Eastern European grocers such as Mix Markt.