The fate of AB-InBev’s former breweries Hasseröder and Diebels

Is it possible that AB-InBev’s job lot sale of the two breweries could be untied again? Insiders think that their new owner, the former banker and consultant Daniel Deistler, who acquired them from AB-InBev in January 2018 for an unknown sum (estimates range from EUR 150 million to EUR 200 million), might exactly do this.

Although Mr Deistler took on Hasseröder and Diebels’ management, he has since hired a former manager from the auto-supply industry to serve as managing director. Like Mr Deistler himself, the new MD Thomas Buchholz, 60, has no brewing industry background. This has led German insiders to speculate that the buyer has plans for the two breweries that AB-InBev could not or would not implement.

It may be unfair, but Mr Buchholz’s age, his professional experience and his training (an engineer with a doctorate) make him an ideal general manager who will keep the two breweries afloat while Mr Deistler pursues his secret plans.

No doubt, of the two breweries – Hasseröder (1.8 million hl beer in 2017) and alt beer producer Diebels (300,000 hl) – the latter is the more troublesome. When sold to Belgium’s Interbrew in the early Noughties, Diebels’ output stood at over one million hl beer. Since then alt beer has lost in popularity. However, the brewery’s sales have shrunk faster than the brewery’s workforce. The business, insiders say, is in dire need of restructuring. For a man like Mr Buchholz, who spent his life working in the cut-throat auto-supply industry, that should not be too big a challenge.

Give Mr Deistler and Mr Buchholz nine months and we shall see clearer as to their real intent.