Diageo (DEO: sentiment, chart, options) announced today that it plans to spend roughly $1 billion to revitalize a famous Dublin brewery that produces Guinness (I hear angels), and to build a second facility. The company will spend 520 million pounds ($1.01 billion) between 2009 and 2013 to renovate the St. James's Gate brewery. This brewery is where the Guinness Storehouse museum (angels again) is located. The company will close 2 smaller breweries at Kilkenny and Dunalk, and it will sell land with current value of 400 million pounds on part of the St. James's Gate site. Roughly 250 jobs will be lost in the move. Shares of DEO were marginally lower in London trading, and have shed nearly 4% during the past month.

DEO notes that the museum is Ireland's most popular tourist attraction and it's also a place I will visit before I die, but DEO did not say that. The new brewery will be the largest in the country when it is completed in 2013. DEO stated, "Both of these breweries have played a critical role in the historic success of Diageo's beer brands in Ireland but currently do not have the scale necessary for sustained success in increasingly competitive market conditions. They are also not suitable sites for the size of the new brewing operation, which must be constructed while existing operations are maintained." The renovated brewery (St. James's Gate) will brew Guinness (again with the angels) for the Irish and British markets while the new brewery will produce enough of the nectar of the Gods to meet growing export demand.