Beer economist Germain Hansmaennel celebrates 70th birthday
Taking a break from writing the definitive book on his Beer Monopoly, the French beer economist Germain Hansmaennel celebrated his 70th birthday on 5 July 2016 in Strasbourg. It was a lavish party for over 100 people, among whom were representatives from the hop merchant Barth Haas Group and the Tucher brewery as well as his two co-authors.
Never one to sit idle, Mr Hansmaennel today sports many hats. He is an entrepreneur, a dedicated philanthropist, a world traveller, and undisputedly one of the most knowledgeable analysts of the international brewing industry.
If you were to call Mr Hansmaennel at 3 am and ask him “What is the market share of Heineken in China?” he would know the answer immediately.
Mr Hansmaennel has a phenomenal memory for numbers. But figures are not just abstract entities for him. He also knows what they mean, which corporate strategies are behind them and how the respective brewing groups act globally.
His major achievement is the invention of the Beer Monopoly. He was the first to notice that the consolidation and globalisation of the brewing industry resembles the Monopoly game: who buys which streets (i.e. countries), who builds hotels (i.e. brands), who has the best chance to win the game.
It took brewers a long time to grasp the fundamentals of the Beer Monopoly. A director of a major German brewery attacked Mr Hansmaennel on stage in front of an audience of 800 people at the World Beer & Drinks Forum in Munich by saying: “We do not throw dice!”
This man obviously had not figured that the Beer Monopoly for Mr Hansmaennel is only a metaphor, a catchy comparison for the rapid consolidation of the brewing industry.
The first to recognize the brilliance of this idea was Rüdiger Ruoss, who gave Mr Hansmaennel the opportunity to elaborate on it in public. For the international brewing and drinks industries Mr Ruoss was what Klaus Schwab was for the World Economic Forum in Davos: the founder, a brilliant networker and visionary.
Between 1997 and 2005 Mr Ruoss facilitated three gatherings of all the major CEOs, all major analysts, many big distributors, and all major suppliers in Munich. The World Beer & Drinks Forum was THE meeting place for these industries.
At the request of the Barth Haas Group, Mr Hansmaennel for many years published his annual beer report, called “Market Leaders and their Challengers in the top 40 Countries”, which became an indispensable compendium.
But crunching numbers has not been Mr Hansmaennel’s sole occupation since leaving his post as Director of France’s brewer Kronenbourg in the 1990s. He also set up a beer import business in France, having identified an opportunity for Tucher’s beer in the CoolKeg, a self-cooling beer keg.
For the past year, Mr Hansmaennel has been busy co-authoring a book - together with Ernst Faltermeier and ‘yours truly’ Ina Verstl - on his Beer Monopoly. Entitled Last Call. Endgame in the Beer Monopoly, it will be published by Hans Carl, Nuremberg, in November 2016.
It will certainly draw attention and hopefully no more silly comments like “we do not throw dice!”
