Consumers vow to boycott Diekirch if the brewery is shut down

By all accounts, beer reaches the parts others cannot reach. It can arouse emotions so strong that citizens not known for their flaring temper suddenly decide to take to the streets. This is what happened in Luxembourg.

When the ceramics manufacturer Villeroy & Boch, one of the most prestigious Luxembourg firms, announced the closure of its plant in March last year with the loss of about 230 jobs, no public outcry ensued. But when AB-InBev said it would shut down the Diekirch brewery and 60 jobs might go, more than a thousand Luxembourg citizens staged a protest march.

Although Luxembourg’s other brewing company, the privately-owned Bofferding, has offered to buy the Diekirch brewery and keep the plant going for another five years, according to media reports, AB-InBev decided not to act on this.

Perhaps AB-InBev’s managers think that the drop in sales will not be that massive once the Diekirch brand is supplied from Belgium and the brewery closed.

The Diekirch brewery produced an estimated 130,000 hl beer in 2009.

However, the recent opinion poll should have been a warning to AB-InBev. 70 percent of those polled said they would stop buying the Diekirch brand. Even if some of these aggrieved Luxembourgers will relent eventually, a drop in sales to the order of 40 percent nevertheless seems possible.

But, hey, what’s an immediate loss of perhaps 60,000 hl to a company that brews 425 million hl a year?