Australian brewer CUB changes hands again

Australia – Under globalisation, brewers have become used to being reduced to a plaything at the mercy of their owners and none more so than Carlton & United (CUB).

Headquartered in Melbourne and founded in 1903, CUB has been a staple of the Australian market for more than a century. Australia’s Elders IXL, which would go on to become the Foster’s Group in 1990, originally acquired the business in 1983. After a failed attempt to “Fosterise the world” and expand into wine, the company became adrift and the beer side of Foster’s was sold to SABMiller in 2011. Only five years later AB-InBev bought SABMiller and took control.

Incidentally, with AB-InBev’s sale to Asahi, the Japanese firm will return to CUB – but this time as its principal owner. Nearly 30 years ago, in 1990, Asahi acquired a 20 percent stake in the by then struggling Elders, which Foster’s eventually managed to buy back.

Apart from CUB, Asahi will also own AB-InBev’s Australian craft breweries, Sydney-based 4 Pines and Adelaide-based Pirate Life, which AB InBev bought over a four-month period in late 2017. A spokesperson for CUB has confirmed to The Crafty Pint website that 4 Pines and Pirate Life are both part of the sale.

After the craft brewers had been bought by AB-InBev, their former owners expressed their excitement at partnering with AB-InBev into the future, and gaining access to the global network of AB-InBev’s unit ZX Ventures. Insiders wonder how those two craft brewers feel about the sudden change of ownership and what this will mean for their business strategies. 

In Australia, Asahi already has a presence in the alcohol sector after acquiring Independent Liquor, a company specialising in pre-mixed drinks and beer, for USD 1.25 billion in 2011, and the Melbourne-based craft brewer Mountain Goat in 2015. However, its beer market share was only 1.2 percent in 2018.

Australia is one of the most profitable beer markets world-wide on a per hl basis. Beer consumption has been relatively flat at 18 million hl, which translates into a per capita consumption of 70 litres. But, in recent years, consumers have shifted to more premium brands, which allowed CUB to hike its market share to 49 percent in 2018 from 45 percent in 2013.

Japanese brewing companies now own both of Australia’s major brewers. Kirin purchased Lion, brewer of XXXX and Toohey’s, in 2009. Although Lion has seen its market share drop since 2013, not least after it had to transfer several international brands back to CUB/AB-InBev, it still controlled 36 percent of the market in 2018.