Cervecería y Maltería Quilmes

Otto Bemberg, a German merchant from Cologne, and his son Otto Sebastián, trained as a brewer in Munich, set up the company in 1888, and the brewery at Quilmes, chosen for its water and railway station, opened on 31 October 1890. The Bemberg group bought other breweries, built maltings and helped found a bottle works. In 1952 a law ordered it liquidated in an inheritance-tax case, and Congress handed the breweries to the brewery workers’ federation in 1955; after that year’s coup they went back to the family, in 1959. Ambev bought into Quilmes in 2002, and InBev took it to about 91% in 2006. Quilmes now runs ten breweries and two maltings and makes Quilmes, Patagonia and Andes Origen alongside Stella Artois and Corona. Since January 2026 it heads AB InBev’s business in Argentina, Uruguay, Chile, Bolivia and Paraguay.