South African Breweries (SAB) on 15 May 2002 closed down its brewery in Kenya and bought a 20 per cent stake in rival Kenya Breweries Ltd (KBL), owned by UK brewing giant Guinness/Diageo.
The reason for the shut down? Falling sales. In exchange, East African Breweries (Guinness) will shut its $30m brewery it built in Moshi, Tanzania and acquire 20 per cent of Tanzania Breweries, where SAB has a majority shareholding.
Some 200 Kenyans employed at SAB’s brewery which made Castle lager and several other brands in the central town of Thika close to Nairobi, have been laid off and another 600
in the company’s distribution chain are likely to loose their jobs too.
Actually, Kenya’s beer market has witnessed a massive decline to about 2.4 million hectolitres from 3..

While most South Africans were complaining about the unseasonable cold weather in October, wine growers were rubbing their hands with joy. The rain and cool weather have contributed to favourable ripening conditions. Wine producers are expecting a better vintage in terms of quality than in recent years. The estimated 2002 crop is 1.1 million tons and similar to the volume harvested last year.

At the Oktoberfest (where else?) visitors were seen sporting T-Shirts saying: "If you want to make love to me, don’t talk. Just smile." A mass or two of beer later it probably did not really matter who made the first move and whether a word was spoken. If a serious hanky-panky is your objective - don’t bother about retracing the course of events. Interpretations will vary greatly.
Sometimes business seems to imitate life. See the unconfirmed speculations about SAB being involved in mergers with other brewers. While in South Africa SAB claims that it has an unwanted suitor in the shape of Miller, people familiar with the situation in London claim that SAB is weighing up a possible merger with U.S. brewer Miller to create the world’s number two beer maker. Let’s wait ...

Paralytic governments, empty coffers, cultural taboos - the extent of the HIV/AIDS pandemic has left many observers speechless, hopeless and helpless. Now the battle against HIV/AIDS seems to have picked up speed. More and more African businesses enter public-private partnerships to combat the disease among their employees and their families.

Africa - which image springs to mind? One of elegant bungalows in the middle of huge plantations, of fair ladies and their dashing suitors sipping sundowners while attentive black servants hover in the background? Then you know your Hemingway and your Hollywood. If you think natural catastrophes, murder and mass killings, famines and scourges, corruption, poverty and despair, you must be watching a lot of CNN.
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But Tom gets the brunette. Never mind that he is cross-eyed, verbally challenged, undersized and feline. "Bacardi Breezer"’s international campaign, featuring a swaggering grey tomcat by the name of Tom who shames his two-legged non-feline competitors into insignificance when it comes to scoring with girls, has taken South Africa by storm.
Perhaps the campaign’s success was helped by the fact that its three TV ads - developed in the UK and shot in Prague - were also shown on the 24 hour "Big Brother" programme which had audiences in South Africa glued to the box for weeks. "Playful Freedom" - that’s the theme of the ads and that’s what Big Brother is all about.
In the UK, Bacardi Breezer sells 170 million bottles annually..

There is more to the much-flaunted notion of corporate citizenship than the “triple bottom line” approach which compels companies to embrace social, economic and environmental issues. Each year, millions of dollars are funnelled into so-called public-private partnerships between a company and a community utilising the company’s resources.
Companies do not view their corporate social investment projects as purely philantrophic. Certainly not in emerging markets. One reason for these investment projects is that the poor do not make good consumers or investors, another reason is that the uneducated do not make good employees.
SAB has been involved in social investment programmes since the mid 1990s. SAB’s Enterprise Development Department invested US$2.5 million in 2001..

SAB - these three letters are familiar not only to trade insiders. Famous worldwide in the meantime: SAB stands for South African Breweries. SAB has done quite a lot to achieve worldwide popularity. The news that 98 percent of South Africa’s beer consumption is attributed to SAB products was not enough.

Even if no other brewery group can make this claim on its home ground. Rather, it was the international strategy pursued with all consequences by the brewery, with its 56 million hl per year output the third largest in the meantime, that contributed to SAB’s high degree of familiarity worldwide. At the end of the Apartheid era, SAB expanded above all to black Africa. Yet this was not enough, in 1995/96 SAB invested heavily in the countries of Central and Eastern Europe.
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Great advertising copy: "Exotic Lemon Ice will set your feet tapping, your body grooving, and send your taste buds on a journey they’ll never forget." Spirit coolers or what we used to call alcopops in the days before Political Correctness have arrived on the African continent. As AFBs (Alcoholic Fruit Beverages) they are starting to break into the liquor market. In Botswana the product "Fusion Ice" was launched recently which combines a tangy lemon blend with a 4.5% ABV "alcohol bite." It is sold in 340ml non-
returnable bottles and priced marginally above mainstream beers. The slogan "A fusion of body and spirit" makes you wonder though. What can the admen mean? A fusion of body and spirit is .... a person... a party going on. Or what did you think?.

Later this year Namibia Breweries will start brewing Guinness in Namibia in an effort to reduce the brand’s cost in South Africa.
The pricing of Guinness and its sister brand Kilkenny has been driven high by the depreciation of the South African rand against the Irish punt which has started to hamper sales.
Presently, the brand is imported from Ireland and distributed by Namibia Breweries’ South African subsidiary. Guinness UDV SA markets the brand in South Africa. The brewer has already installed equipment required to brew Guinness in Namibia. Namibia Breweries took over distribution of Guinness and Kilkenny in 1999 after Guinness ended its contract with South African Breweries..

Last march the new South-African beverage group Distell signed officially by making itself being registered at the Security Exchange of the stock exchange of Johannesburg. The quotation followed upon the alliance of the Distiller’s Corporation and Stellenbosch Farmers’ Winery last year. According to its own statement Distell is the tenth largest beverage group world-wide. It is understandable that the alliance encountered some opposition, especially from the competitors. Bulmer SA and Seagram Africa even tried to stop it by means of a plaint at the Cape Town High Court. The plaintiffs claimed that the alliance would have to be decised by the public authorities, since it would contravene the competition law. Therefore, according to Distell’s opinion, the conditions did not change..