SABMiller buy Maheu beverage portfolio
Ok, YOU may not like them but millions of people in Africa enjoy drinking maize or sorghum-based beverages, be they alcoholic or not. Because they have texture and a certain viscosity, many African consumers think these thickish, opaque and milkshake-type beverages a meal replacement. And often they are.
Southern Africa’s traditional alcoholic drink is sorghum beer, mostly known by its brand name Chibuku. Its non-alcoholic cousin is called Maheu, a product also know in South Africa and Malawi, which rose to prominence in Zambia, after the first production plant was built in 1999. In Zambia, Maheu is reportedly sold in a square plastic bottle in a variety of flavours like strawberry, banana, buttercream, orange and regular. The long shelf life of the product – eight weeks or more – makes it relatively easy to distribute and less of a liability for retailers in rural areas.
For lack of a better description, SABMiller classify Maheu as an energy food drink, as this is how consumers see it. In this respect, Maheu falls squarely into a segment of malt- or maize-based non-alcoholic beverages, which appear to have little in common if we judge them on their appearances. There are the dark malt beverages – Malta, Vitamalt, Malt etc – so popular in West Africa and the Caribbean, and there are the malt-based soft-drink type beverages like Fayrouz (owned by Heineken and available in selected markets of northern Africa as well as Nigeria), Alvaro and Novida, which are currently revolutionising the soft drink market in East Africa.
What unites all these beverages is their added (or perceived) nutritional value.
SABMiller saw the potential of Maheu, whose production is straightforward – nothing fancy or costly, in other words – and bought it in September. The global brewer plans to sell it in other African markets through local production. Already 25 percent of Maheu, say SABMiller, are exported to Zambia’s neighbours, such as the Democratic Republic of Congo, Zimbabwe, Malawi and Mozambique.
They expect that completion of the acquisition will take place in the next two months.
In Zambia, a 600,000 hl lager beer market, SABMiller Africa already own Zambian Breweries Group, the largest clear (i.e. lager) beer and soft drink business in the country and 70 percent of National Breweries Plc which is listed on the Lusaka Stock Exchange (LuSE) and commands a substantial amount of the opaque beer (i.e. Chibuku) market.
The acquisition seeks to further strengthen SABMiller Africa’s objective of entering new beverage categories such as soft drinks including water and other non-alcoholic beverages to complement their leading beer positions. Thus they hope to offer a full range of products apart from beer in all price segments.
SABMiller have come to learn that although Africa’s economy may still be growing, they have to expand their range to include more affordable alcohol products too.
