As Chinese beer consumers continue to trade up, imported beers have risen in popularity next to domestic high-end brands. Observers say the import segment of the Chinese beer market already controls four percent.

A storm is brewing for discount brands selling lower-quality products as Vietnamese beer drinkers are increasingly picking up premium and superpremium products from shelves, with premium beer consumption rocketing to ten million hl in 2016.

And another craft brewer goes to AB-InBev. After acquiring Sydney’s 4 Pines in September 2017, AB-InBev has snapped up Adelaide’s Pirate Life, media reported on 30 November 2017.

In November 2017, Chinese authorities seized 14,000 bottles of counterfeit wines, labelled with the Australian brand Penfold’s, and arrested 13 people, following a complaint from Penfold’s parent company Treasury Wine Estates (TWE).

It does not seem as if lots of potential buyers are queuing outside Asahi’s door. Although it has been an open secret for the better part of this year that Japanese brewer Asahi seeks to sell its 20 percent stake in Tsingtao, the number two brewer in the country, only two competitors have come forward so far: China Resources Beer, China’s number one brewer, and Carlsberg, which ranks fifth.

For long craft brewers have complained that they cannot get access to taps as publicans prefer to contract them out to the country’s two big brewers – CUB (AB-InBev) and Lion (Kirin). Despite there being almost 400 craft brewers, Lion and CUB control more than 50 percent of the craft segment through brands like Little Creatures, James Squire and White Rabbit (Lion), as well as Matilda Bay Brewing, Wild Yak and Goose Island (CUB). Even Coca-Cola Amatil has moved into this space and so have the retailers.

The alcohol division of Bickford’s, otherwise best known in Australia for its cordials and fruit juices, has acquired the craft brewer Vale. Both businesses are from South Australia and privately owned. The deal was announced on 12 October 2017.

Renaissance Brewing, the first local company to receive equity crowdfunding, has gone into voluntary administration after cash flow problems and product management issues, it was reported on 10 October 2017.

Is this a preemptive step to avoid being fined? Asahi Breweries will raise the wholesale price of beer delivered mainly to bars and restaurants by about ten percent in March 2018, the company’s first price hike since 2008, Japan’s media reported on 4 October 2017.

Japan’s Asahi Group Holdings said on 2 October 2017 that it plans to divest its interest in a beverage joint venture with Indonesia's Indofood, a unit of Salim Group, to refocus on its core alcohol business.