Coopers goes from strength to strength
Is it their beers or the fact that they are family-owned? The South Australian-based Coopers, the nation’s largest locally owned brewer, has again bucked the trend that has seen beer drinkers abandon their pints for wine and alcopops for several years now, to post record beer sales of 697,000 hl in the 2012/2013 financial year, ending 30 June 2013.
Dr Tim Cooper, the fifth generation managing director of Coopers, told media in early August 2013: “We are in our fourth year of market decline now. The decline is slowing but we are still seeing a decline of 2 percent across Australia.”
No doubt, the takeover of Foster’s by SABMiller in 2011has benefited Coopers’ brewing business. A number of global beer brands have left the Foster’s camp since to seek new local partners, with the family-owned Coopers winning a deal with the world’s fourth-largest brewer, Carlsberg.
The Carlsberg contract, along with new licence arrangements with brands such as Sapporo and Kronenbourg 1664, helped drive the majority of Coopers’ 8.3 percent rise in beer volume sales for 2012/13.
Its partnership with Japanese brewer Sapporo generated a near-100 percent lift in sales in Australia this past financial year to 12,000 hl.
Dr Cooper said despite tough trading conditions, the brewer had now averaged 9.8 percent growth for the past 20 years, enabling the company to emerge from being a largely South Australian-based brewer to a national company.
Incidentally, the Coopers family secured 24th place on the 2013 Business Review Weekly (BRW) Rich Families List, with an estimated AUD 450 million (USD 411 million/EUR 309 million), up AUD 75 million from last year. On the publication of the list, BRW editor James Thomson said on 26 July 2013 that “Coopers have been a shining light on the list for a decade at least, steadily growing their wealth”. No comment was available from Coopers.
BRW reports that nationally the top five spots were retained by the Smorgon, Besena, Liebmann, Myer and Wilson families and that 70 percent of Australian companies operate as family businesses.
