Pilsner Urquell Brewery

Pilsner Urquell Brewery, formally Plzensky Prazdroj, was founded in Plzen, Bohemia, established in 1839 as a citizens' cooperative before brewing began in October 1842 under Bavarian brewer Josef Groll. It became the first brewery to produce a pale lager, a style so influential that more than two-thirds of the beer made in the world today is pale lager, and it remains the largest beer producer and exporter in the Czech Republic, with annual production of 9.7 million hectolitres as of 2013. After passing through nationalization under communism and later privatization, Japan's Asahi Group Holdings acquired the brewery in 2017 as part of the regulatory unwinding of Anheuser-Busch InBev's SABMiller acquisition, and operates it today as a subsidiary.