AB-InBev makes a U-turn on new brewery project in Munich
Munich media also reported with some glee that Jobst Kayser-Eichberg, who was one of the previous owners, was fully convinced until last year that InBev would vacate the inner city site so that he could develop it.
How could he have been so mistaken?
No details of the new lease have been leaked but Munich’s pundits believe that InBev has successfully renegotiated the original contract (signed when InBev bought Spaten-Löwenbräu in 2003), which included a severe hike in rent should InBev refuse to leave the Munich brewery site in a few year’s time.
It’s no secret, though, that InBev would have willingly given up Munich as a production centre had it been able to solve the problem of where to brew instead the wheat beer brand Franziskaner (about 1.0 million hl) which is marketed as a Bavarian brand. InBev does not own another brewery in Bavaria. It has four more breweries in the rest of Germany.
All eyes are now on InBev’s brewery in Hannover, Gilde, which was put on the market a year ago. To date no buyer has been found although media speculation has repeatedly focused on two: Einbecker Brewery, a struggling middling brewer from near-by Einbeck and Frankfurter Brauhaus, a private-label producer. Both have expressed an interest in acquiring the Gilde brewery (1.3 million hl), although what they were said to be offering –no more than a symbolic amount of money – cannot have been to InBev’s liking.
In recent years InBev has not made much of an effort to conceal its displeasure with its German investments, which it made in the early 2000s. Despite InBev’s efforts, margins and profits have always been more than underwhelming. Its market share was 9 percent in 2009, which, in the Brazilians’ grand scheme of things, is neither here nor there … and certainly a long way off market leadership.
Earlier this year InBev announced it would axe over 360 jobs in Germany, that’s about 14 percent of its total domestic workforce. More than 220 jobs have already gone. That brings its headcount down to 2700 people.
