New South African drinks giant formed

In March, Distell, the new South African drinks group, launched itself officially by getting listed on the Johannes-burg Stock Exchange’s Security Exchange. This followed the merger of Distiller’s Corporation and Stellenbosch Farmers’ Winery in 2000. Distell claims to be the tenth largest drinks company in the world.
The merger was met with opposition from Bulmer SA and Seagram Africa that tried to stop it through an interdict through the Cape High court. Both parties argue that the merger is notifiable in terms of the Competition’s Act. Distell, on the other hand, insists that the voting pool made up of South African breweries, KWV and Rembrandt, each with a 30% stake in the former companies, exercise the same authority in the new company. Distell has an assets base of R3..

bhayi Brewery opened

Irrespective of a recent decline in beer sales, South African Breweries (SAB) officially opened its new Ibhayi Brewery near Port Elizabeth to the east of Cape Town. It took 18 months and R650m (US$81m) to build the brewery. The brewery which is fully automated, has a production capacity of 2.3m hl annually. It is set in an area of an extremely high unemployment rate.

Viagra for brands

What do you do with a well-known consumer brand which follows the law of gravity and fails to perform as desired? You sigh resignedly and then spread the cloak of oblivion over it, as did Detroit-based General Motors Corporation? In December, the US car maker decided to discontinue the Olds-mobile brand after decades of pummelling and cajoling and had done nothing to fight the consumer’s growing ennui with the Oldsmobile brand.
Now there are quite a few tired old beer brands out there too. Take the saga of South African Breweries (SAB) and the new improved Lion Lager, for example. Lion Lager, once the pride of certain segments of the South African society, has seen volumes decline rapidly during the 1990s. In 1999 only slightly more than 3m hl of Lion Lager were sold....

Beer market in Africa has big potential

The African beer market has large untapped potential. At a time when the dominant market on the continent, South Africa, is contracting, the second largest market, Nigeria, has big growth opportunities, a population of 120 million with a per-capita consumption of only 5.25 l of beer per annum (a total of 6.3 million hl), compared to South Africa’s 60.47 l per-capita per annum (43.0 million hl).
The size of the African beer market is estimated to be about 62.1 million hl at present. South African Breweries (SAB) are the uncontested market leader, producing 31.8 million hl (25.1 million hl in South Africa alone). Second place is taken by BGI of France (8.1 million hl), followed by Heineken (7.7 million hl) of the Netherlands and Guinness (6.2 million hl) of Britain..