Michel Moortgat of Duvel brewery named “Manager of the Year”
Our colleagues over in Belgium picked a real winner. The Flemish-language business magazine Trends named Duvel CEO Michel Moortgat “Manager of the Year 2010”. Not enough. The title “Marketing Manager of the Year 2010” went to Johan Van Dijck, who heads marketing at Duvel. This being Belgium, the Walloons could not be left out. Hence Trends’ sister publication “Trends-Tendences” chose Nicolas Lambert, Marketing Manager at Heineken’s Alken-Maes brewery as its “Marketing Manager de l’Année 2010”.
Belgium’s brewers huffed and puffed. Three brewers out of four were Trends’ award recipients – that’s almost like having a straight flush at poker (well, not quite, but you get the drift).
It’s always a tricky business to decide on a business hero. As the course of business careers hardly ever runs straight, captains of industry may be feted one day and sacked the next, or even end up in the nick, as happened to two of Trends’ past winners. Never mind.
In the case of Michel Moortgat, 44, Trends made the right choice. Mr Moortgat is the fourth generation Moortgat to run Duvel. He may be a “one company man” as the editor of Trends, Wolfgang Riepl, called him, having joined the family beer business in 1991 when he was only 24 and fresh out of university.
Nonetheless, he succeeded in turning around the company’s fortunes when, after the stock-market listing in 1999, Duvel’s share price began its long decline. It hit rock bottom in 2002, hovering around EUR 14 per share. But it has since risen steadily from EUR 32 in March 2009 to EUR 72 on 2 March 2011.
Despite the stock-market float, the company is still controlled by the founding Moortgat family. Mr Moortgat and his two brothers own over 60 percent of the shares.
Today, the Duvel Moortgat beer business comprises the well-known Duvel brand (56 percent of turnover and 52 percent of volume) and several smaller brands, many of which have been added on over the years as Duvel went rescuing a few family-owned Belgian breweries (Brasserie d’Achouffe and Liefmans) which had fallen on hard times. Last year, Duvel took over the Antwerp brewery of De Koninck beating several other suitors to the post.
In Belgium, Duvel Moortgat’s beers enjoy a market share of 7 percent, behind AB-InBev (57 percent) and Heineken’s Alken-Maes (11 percent). Being number three with such a small market share has not adversely affected Duvel’s domestic business. It enjoys healthy growth and margins. In 2009 Duvel Moortgat’s EBIT margin rose to 21.2 percent from 18.8 percent in 2008 and stood at EUR 24 million.
As Mr Moortgat said in the January 2011 Trends article: “vivons cachés, vivons heureux”. Meaning: if you manage to stay under the radar of the big guys, you can do well.
Trends reckons that in 2010 the total beer volume of the Duvel Moortgat group exceeded 600,000 hl, 45 percent of which was exported. A lot was shipped to the United States, which is the company’s major export market.
Moreover, in the U.S. in 2003 Mr Moortgat bought out the founders of the Ommegang brewery , an American brewery that brews speciality beers in authentic Belgian style.
Previously, in August 2001, Duvel had bought a 50 percent stake in the Bernard brewery, a Czech brewer of premium beers.
On 22 March 2011 Mr Moortgat will present his company’s financial results for the year 2010. Most likely, he will report a higher turnover and volume increases despite the difficult circumstances his beers face in their markets.
At Trends they will be slapping each other on their backs for having picked out a real winner.
