Otto Bemberg

Otto Bemberg (May 1, 1827 – March 2, 1895) was a German Argentine businessman prominent in the development of early Argentine industry. He is mostly notable for having been the founder of Cervecería y Maltería Quilmes, the largest brewery in the country. Biography Otto Peter Friedrich Bemberg was born in Cologne, Germany, in 1827. He emigrated to Argentina in 1850 and married María Luisa Ocampo, the daughter of prominent local landowners and developers. He established an import-export firm specializing in the import of textile products and the export of local cereals for the European market. In 1860 he was appointed Consul General in Paris, where the couple remained until 1867. On the eve of his departure, Bemberg established his first manufacturing firm, the Franco Argentina Brewery; his father, Pedro Bemberg Boullé, had been partly of French descent. In Paris, he also established the Brasserie Argentine Societé Anonyme ("Argentine Brewing, Inc.") and later had his son, Otto Sebastián, enrol at the Technical University of Munich, where he became a trained brewer. Bemberg obtained commissions from Presidents Bartolomé Mitre and Nicolás Avellaneda for the establishment of agricultural colonies in the then-practically undeveloped Santa Fe Province, the site of some of the country's most productive cropland. Retaining financial interests in Paris, he and his son established the Brasserie Argentine Quilmes (Quilmes Brewery) in 1890, and inaugurated its brewing and bottling plant in the company's namesake, the southern Buenos Aires suburb of Quilmes. The facility was the largest and most advanced in Argentina, and soon eclipsed its main competitor, the Bieckert Brewery. Bemberg died in Paris in 1896 and his son, Otto Sebastián, led the company to a dominant position in its local market; his younger son, Herman Bemberg, remained in Paris and became a noted French composer.