The government has decided to allow restaurants to establish micro breweries so that they can produce beer for their customers, the Ministry of Industry said.

A meeting of the Industrial Promotion Board (IPB) chaired by Industry Minister Mahesh Basnet also agreed to classify restaurants possessing their own micro brewery as a tourism industry, and it has asked the government to publish the decision in the Nepal Gazette to make it policy. “The decision was reached after a series of meetings and discussions. The 210th meeting of the board had formed a committee to do a study. We have made the decision after analyzing all the aspects,” said Maheswar Neupane, the director general of the Department of Industry.

“The initiative will help promote tourism. Plus, we have limited varieties of beers in the market. The establishment of micro breweries will expand the choice of beers for customers.”

According to Neupane, potential operators of micro breweries will have to make a deposit of Rs200,000 with the government and should have a sales capacity of at least 2,500 litres annually.

They will be allowed to sell a maximum of 2.5 million litres of the beverage annually. “The beer produced in these micro breweries cannot be bottled and sold outside restaurant premises,” Neupane said.  

The brewing should be done in the restaurant and visible to the customers. Likewise, the licence holder should own at least 20 percent of the micro brewery. The government has also set several other directives for the operation of such breweries.

The alcohol content of the beer produced in micro breweries should not be over 7 percent. These breweries should be established in a concrete building, and the storage and processing areas should be located in separate buildings.

The breweries should also have a Clean in Process (CIP) facility and a laboratory. The tank and pipeline to be used in the micro brewery should be made of stainless steel. If a plastic pipe is used, it should be food grade plastic. The industry will have to keep the brewery under the direct surveillance of an alcohol or food technologist.

Once micro breweries have been categorized as a tourism industry and the notice is published in the Nepal Gazette, the concerned department will be authorized to issue permits for the operation of such enterprises, according to the IPB decision.

A working guideline on the location of industries forbids the establishment of beer factories and conducting the fermentation within the Kathmandu Valley and municipality areas elsewhere in the country. However, the IPB has decided to recommend a amendment to this provision to permit the establishment of micro breweries.

“Since these breweries will be operated in restaurants, we will have to make an amendment to the provision,” said Neupane. However, they will have to conduct

an Initial Environment Examination (IEE).