Family-brewer de Koninck up for sale?
Belgium may deserve praise for being a beer lovers’ paradise. Still, there is no denying that many of its speciality beer breweries have been struggling for years to make ends meet. Their beers, typically consumed in cafés and restaurants, have been hit hard by the number of bars closing down in recent years.
Burdened with excess capacity and unwilling to reduce their loyal workforce, several family-owned breweries have been thinking long and hard about their future: should they sell or seek a tie-up with another brewery even if in both cases they risk the closure of their plant? Not an easy decision to make for a proud and prestigious family brewer.
Despite the fact that quite a few brewers have been rumoured to be close to a sale over the years, de Koninck is the first to have made its plight public.
Alas, de Koninck’s queue of suitors is rather short. To date, only two have been named: Heineken and Duvel Moortgat.
Dutch brewer Heineken has two production sites in Belgium following the takeover of Alken Maes as part of the Scottish & Newcastle acquisition in 2008. Today, the Alken-Maes group is the number two brewer in Belgium with a market share of only 11 percent in 2008 (AB-InBev: 57 percent market share) and brews beers such as Maes, Cristal, Grimbergen, Mort Subite, Affligem, Op-Ale, Postel, Desperados, Heineken, Foster’s, Brugs, Ciney, Hapkin, Maes Nature, Judas, Golding Campina and Maes Zero en Cristal 1928. The group employs about 500 workers, says Heineken.
Obviously, beer aficionados the world over who have already commented on the possible sale would like to see Belgian brewer Duvel Moortgat accept the tender rather than Heineken, which has been termed “the arch closer of breweries” by British beer writer Roger Protz. What makes armchair strategists so sure that Duvel could save de Koninck is that in 2008, Duvel took over the fruit beer producer Liefmans. After a relaunch of the brand and the release of a new product, Duvel seems to have achieved the turnaround of Liefmans.
Duvel Moortgat, the number three brewer in Belgium with a 4 percent market share, has been able to defy market trends. 2009 has been a good year for the Duvel Moortgat group. Consolidated turnover rose 12 percent to EUR 113 million while EBIT was up 26.3 percent to EUR 24 million. Duvel Moortgat registered an EBIT margin of 21.2 percent in 2009, compared with 18.8 percent in 2008.
