Coopers wins New Zealand contract for Budweiser
Distribution company Premium Beverages, 80 percent owned by Coopers Brewery, has won the distribution rights to distribute the Budweiser beer brand in New Zealand. Imported beer is a fast growing category in the New Zealand beer market. The deal with Budweiser takes effect on 1 October 2008 and replaces a deal with wine distributor Negociants.
Since 2005 Coopers Brewery, the privately owned brewery in Adelaide, has been importing and distributing both Budweiser and Michelob in Australia under an agreement with Anheuser-Busch which is to run for ten years. As in New Zealand, the premium imported beer category is growing in Australia.
However, with only two brewers – Foster’s and Lion Nathan - dominating the market, Anheuser-Busch had to partner with Australia’s number three brewery, Coopers, if it did not want to end up in rather promiscuous circumstances which is the Australian beer market.
For example, if you take the InBev portfolio, Beck’s is brewed by Lion Nathan whereas Stella Artois is brewed Foster’s. Heineken is brewed by Lion Nathan and Carlsberg by Foster’s. However, Birell, Carlsberg’s non-alcoholic Swiss beer brand is brewed by Coopers.
Apparently, Anheuser-Busch shied away from signing a contract with Lion Nathan for Australia as the Americans feared their flagship brand would not receive the same kind of “tender love and care” as does Heineken.
To date, Coopers sells about 400,000 cases (à 8.55 litres) annually of Budweiser and Michelob. Still, this has not stopped Anheuser-Busch from putting the pressure on Coopers to brew Budweiser under licence. As Tim Cooper, Managing Director of Coopers explained in an interview with Brauwelt in August, licensed production of Budweiser has not seemed feasible to Coopers yet. So Coopers decided to postpone a decision until 2009 – and heavens know what Anheuser-Busch’s then new owners InBev plan to do.
Readers may be interested to note that Anheuser-Busch, well-known for its reticence to invest in foreign breweries, even offered to buy Coopers’ shares in an effort to strengthen ties – a suggestion that the Coopers board rejected outright, just having recovered from a hostile takeover bid by Lion Nathan in 2006.
Australia’s premium beer segment has grown 6.2 percent in value between May 2007 and May 2008 and enjoys an almost 20 percent share of the packaged beer category, according to Nielsen.
The trouble with premium foreign beer brands is parallel importing. Heineken is available locally brewed and as an import from Asia. Lion Nathan cannot be too pleased with that. A similar fate has befallen Corona Extra, Australia’s number one imported premium beer and ninth largest beer brand by value that holds a 30.4 percent volume share of the imported beer segment. Although Foster’s is the official importer, several bottle shops (off-licences) have decided to bring it into the country themselves from Asia.
That worry does not concern Coopers yet. Nor were they really upset when the brewery got into “trouble” with Australian monarchists in early August with a billboard promoting Coopers Pale Ale in Sydney which urged readers to ‘Forget the monarchy, support the publicans.’ Objections coincided with the removal of the ad, which, according to the agency concerned, had exceeded its booked time.
In Adelaide, locals were entertained with a print colour ad depicting a bottle and glass of hazy Pale with the slogan ‘As clear as the air in Beijing’.
 | Coopers brewery is well-known in Australia for its quirky ads. This one they placed in the newspapers after the Coopers family had successfully fought |
