Three cheers to Pabod Breweries
The resurrected Pabod Breweries scored a victory over its rival Nigerian Breweries (NBL) when on 30 June 2008 a Rivers State court ruled that NBL´s injunction over Pabod´s use of a contested bottle could not be upheld.
The rift between Nigerian Breweries Limited (NBL), which is majority-owned by Heineken, and Pabod Breweries, a state-owned brewery in the Niger river delta, assumed a new dimension when NBL insisted at the Federal High Court in Port Harcourt that about two million Grand Beer bottles belonging to Pabod must be destroyed.
In March the court had granted NBL an injunction which forbade Pabod Breweries to sell its Grand beer in a proprietary bottle which NBL claims violates the design concept and patent of its Star bottle.
Despite strong evidence given by the witness, West African Glass Industries, the producers of the contentious bottle who identified 12 distinguishing factors showing the two bottles of Star and Grand were “radically different,” the presiding judge, I.N. Buba agreed to NBL´s request for an interlocutory injunction against Pabod´s use of the bottle.
Fortunately, the judge was promoted in May and a new judge finally cast a verdict on 30 June 2008, saying that NBL´s injunction could not be upheld as the two bottles were really “radically different”. Nevertheless, this victory does not render Pabod a big service as NBL now has 30 days to appeal against the verdict. Until the end of that period Pabod Breweries is prevented from using its proprietary bottle.
In order not to have to pour its beer into the river, the management of Pabod decided that while the case was pending it would use Nigeria´s generic beer bottle. In May 2008 – that´s four months after it was supposed to launch Grand into the market – Pabod Breweries announced that it had released millions of generic bottles containing the much coveted Grand beer.
The Acting General Manager of Pabod Breweries, Mr Sonny Williamson lamented the delay by the court in delivering judgement on a matter that was supposedly on the accelerated hearing list of the court but added that the company had taken the decision to employ the generic bottle in response to overwhelming pressure by beer consumers and because of the determination of the company to take the lead in the beer market in its coverage area.
