Baladin Farm and Brewery

The Baladin brewery was founded by master-brewer Teo Musso in 1996 to produce and serve their own beers in Piozzo, a small town in the Langhe area in Piedmont, in Northern Italy.

Their initial aim was to produce beer with its own characteristic flavour and image for the Italian restaurant and delicatessen sectors, and today their products are also exported abroad.

Since January 2012, Baladin is both a farm and a brewery, enabling them to be fully responsible for the entire production chain of their beers, right from growing and harvesting the raw materials.

Their ultimate goal is to have a fully self-sufficient cycle, producing not only wealth but also values and ethics. They have not quite reached the point of being entirely self-sufficient, but future development prospects indicate that this goal will be reached within a few years.

A new, more modern 3,000 m² production facility was inaugurated in 2016, at the foot of Piozzo Hill, in the near town of Farigliano. The idea was to renovate an existing building to avoid building on a green area.

The new facility will enable Baladin to increase production from a current annual capacity of 12,000 hectolitres – divided across 30 different types of beer – to a possible 50,000 hectolitres per year in the future.

PERFECT PRODUCTS FOR PERFECT INSTALLATION

Works on the new Baladin facility, which will be used for the production and storage of their range of beers as well as the new Head Office, started in October 2015 and was completed at the end of June 2016.

The new offices were tiled with porcelain tiles measuring 60x60 cm with a thickness of 10 mm, made by the company Cotto d’Este, while similar tiles, but with a thickness of 14 mm, were installed in the production and storage areas.

To prepare the substrate in the processing areas, the choice was for a concrete floor with a power-float finish to create all the slopes required, while for the new offices a more traditional substrate was installed.

Once all the substrates had been cured sufficiently, installation of the ceramic flooring could take place. This was carried out to perfection by Roberto Gondolo, the first ever Assoposa-accredited Master-tiler in the Province of Cuneo, using KERAFLEX MAXI S1 grey, high-performance, non-slip cementitious adhesive with Low Dust technology, very low emission of volatile organic compounds (VOC) and certified, offset greenhouse gas emissions, a special product for bonding large format ceramic tiles and stone material.

The product chosen to grout the tiles in the offices was KERACOLOR GG high-performance, polymer-modified cementitious mortar for grout lines from 4 to 15 mm wide. The grout lines in the processing and storage areas, on the other hand, were grouted with KERAPOXY CQ (colour 113), a two-component, anti-acid, easy-to-apply, bacteriostatic epoxy filler with excellent cleanability and BioBlock^® technology, ideal for grouting wall and floor coverings in the food industry where a high level of protection against the formation and proliferation of microorganisms is required.

KERAPOXY CLEANER was then used to clean all the marks and traces of epoxy grout from the surfaces.

For the expansion joints, the product chosen was MAPEFLEX PU30 epoxy-polyurethane sealant, ideal for sealing joints in ceramic floors subjected to intense traffic.

The aluminium skirting in the processing and storage areas was bonded with ULTRABOND MS RAPID, rapid-setting assembly adhesive for internal and external use with a high sucker effect.

The second phase of the project is now under way, which includes a park, home-grown wheat and hops and their own butcher’s shop. The aim is to open the works to the public, with guided tours and areas to relax and enjoy life. Creative entrepreneurship and ethical values first and foremost. These are the ingredients behind the success of the Baladin Brewery. An excellent example of Italian industry in constant growth which Mapei hopes will never stop.