When his father died in 1835, J.C. Jacobsen took over his small brewery in Inner Copenhagen. Eventually, he decided he needed a new brewery with larger cool storage space. Therefore, he built a new brewery just outside Copenhagen, on top of a hill, where water was flowing. With that, Carlsberg was born in 1847. 

J.C. Jacobsen uses the incident to modernise the brewery yet again and this time in fire-proof materials. Thus, while it was a devastating catastrophe, J.C. Jacobsen was resilient and built an even better brewery in short time.

He later installs a cooling system that improves product quality and leads to an increase in sales.

Jacobsen's son Carl returns from studying brewing process in Europe. He is invited to brew his own beer in the newly constructed Annex brewery.

J.C. starts his export business in the second half of the 1800's, among other initiatives by sending boxes of Carlsberg beers with ships to Great Britain, China and India, and he's even considering Australia.

Much later, in 1954, Great Britain is Carlsberg’s largest export market. At this time, a ship loaded with Carlsberg beer sails across the North Sea every 12 days.

J.C. Jacobsen was driven by the question: How do you brew the best beer of the highest quality? In 1875, he therefore set up the Carlsberg Research Laboratory, convinced that he needed to understand the chemistry of beer and the physiology of the organisms involved.

As a brewer, J.C. Jacobsen spent his whole life acquiring the latest knowledge. As a teenager, he attended lectures given by H.C. Ørsted in the Society for the Dissemination of Natural Science. Here, he came to understand how scientific discoveries had increased productivity and quality within a range of industries. He reasoned that the same could be true for brewing.

The Carlsberg Foundation is one of the world’s oldest industrial foundations. Here, ambitious brewing enterprise blossoms side by side with research and support for the finest science, art and culture. 

The Carlsberg Foundation is the principal shareholder in Carlsberg A/S and exerts a decisive influence on the brewery through its controlling shareholding. 

The Carlsberg Foundation supports visionary and innovative international basic research within the natural sciences, social sciences and humanities. Basic research that makes us smarter, helps us to address global challenges and benefits society.

1913 - The Little Mermaid

Carl Jacobsen donates The Little Mermaid statue to the city of Copenhagen.

The sculpture, designed by Edvard Eriksen, was inspired by the royal solo ballerina Ellen Price de Plane. On 23 August 1913, the sculpture is erected at Langelinie.

Becoming a global player

From its origins as a small regional brewery on a hill outside Copenhagen, the Carlsberg Group is now an international player with activities across the world.

But the journey is far from over.

Carlsberg takes lead on sustainability and launches a new sustainability programme, Together Towards Zero, with the ambitions of ZERO carbon footprint, ZERO water waste, ZERO irresponsible drinking and a ZERO accidents culture.

The new ESG programme Together Towards ZERO and Beyond has updated targets and new focus areas. These include a roadmap to achieve net zero carbon emissions across the entire value chain by 2040, from the barley in the fields to the beer in hand.