Trust Australian journalists to go snooping after Lion’s figures as soon as the market-leading local brewer submits its financial results with the corporate regulator. On 26 January 2015 media revealed that the Lion-Heineken joint venture suffered a 16 percent fall in annual profits in its latest financial year (ended 30 September 2015) as net profit after tax dropped to AUD 10.5 million (USD 7.5 million) from AUD 12.5 million a year earlier. However, sales increased 2.5 percent to AUD 67.4 million (USD 47.7 million) in the financial year 2015.

Same procedure every year. The announcement of annual beer production figures in Vietnam is usually accompanied by a bit of cacophony from the nomenklatura, some calling for further privatisations of the state-owned breweries with others reject such claims.

Oh Lordy, how many changes in ownership can the brewer CUB take? Until 2011 CUB was part of Foster’s, which then sold it to SABMiller for AUD 12.3 billion (almost USD 12 billion in those days).

Hopped ciders are supposedly “tasty as hell”. In South Australia, the Hills Cider Company released its Hop Edition cider (8% ABV) in bottles, following a few small batch releases in keg. Made with fresh Adelaide Hills apples and – probably dry-hopped – with a blend of Cascade, Chinook, Summer, Citra and Galaxy hops, the “fusion displays upfront pineapple, citrus and tropical fruit aromatics, with subtle apricot, melon, pink grapefruit and citrus flavours,” Hills Cider’s Steve Dorman was quoted as saying. “The astringency of the hops balances the sweetness of the fresh apples, to create a fresh, crisp and fruit driven cider … with the ever growing popularity of hopped cider styles in USA and an increasingly educated craft beer and cider market here in Australia, we thought this would be a very exciting addition to the Australian craft cider category,” he said.

The death of William T (Bill) Cooper at the age of 82 on 11 November 2015 after a long illness is noted with sincere regret. Bill, the father of current Managing Director Dr Tim Cooper, joined the family-owned Coopers brewery in 1960 and was responsible for Marketing and Sales from 1965 to 1985, and, in addition, became Director and Secretary in 1969. He was appointed Managing Director in 1977, a position he held until retiring in January 2002, and remained a Director until 2009 when he was replaced by his daughter, Melanie, who became the first woman on Coopers’ board.

Brewforce is an Indian-based company which has been delivering process and engineering equipment and solutions to breweries and distilleries for 35 years now. Regarding know-how and equipment, they are supported by their German partner Brewforce Brautechnik GmbH.

The privately-owned Coopers Brewery from Adelaide defied falling Australian beer consumption, increased pressure on margins and higher malt prices to achieve record beer sales and revenues for its financial year 2014/15.

Revolving doors at Anadolu Efes: After a little more than a year at the helm, Damian Gammell resigned as President of Beverage Group and CEO of Anadolu Efes on 31 October 2015 to take up his new responsibility as Chief Operating Officer of Coca-Cola European Partners, the recently formed western European Coke bottler. Mr Gammell had only been working as Beverage Group President and CEO of Anadolu Efes since January 2014.

What’s going on at Diageo? After selling some beer assets to Heineken, Diageo continued in its attic clearance mode by offloading the majority of assets from Diageo Wine’s U.S. and UK operations to Australia’s largest winemaker Treasury Wine Estates (TWE) for USD 625 million.

To learn more about the latest technology innovations and processes in raw material handling and grinding, all major Japanese breweries and distilleries attended a seminar of Bühler in Osaka or Yokohama.