Will Carlsberg close the Holsten brewery in Hamburg?
Carlsberg Group say that the Holsten brewery in the Altona district of Hamburg has an annual production capacity of around 3.2 million hl. Carlsberg Germany is one of the leading breweries in northern and eastern Germany with a production volume of 6.172 million hl beer in 2007. When in April 2004 the Holsten Group became part of Carlsberg Germany, Carlsberg in turn became the world’s number four brewing group.
A spokesperson for Carlsberg Germany would not comment on the rumour but said that they knew of no plans to shut down the Holsten brewery next year.
In their conference call in August, Carlsberg’s CEO Jørgen Buhl Rasmussen said that northern and western European beer markets have declined approx. 6 percent on average in volume during the first six months 2009. He refrained from giving figures for the German market.
Should Carlsberg close the Holsten brewery in Hamburg, say next year, Carlsberg will have other locations where to brew their beer and from where to supply the German market.
There is their Danish Fredericia brewery, just north of the German-Danish border and only 260 km away from Hamburg. In recent years, Carlsberg have expanded Fredericia’s production capacity to 4.3 million hl from 2.5 million hl. Then there is Carlsberg’s German Lübz brewery, some 150 km to the east of Hamburg, and not to forget their German Feldschlösschen brewery in Dresden, some 500 km to the southeast.
Perhaps some of the volume will be transferred to a Hamburg brewery yet to be built.
There was talk at drinktec in Munich in September that the distributor Nordmann was going to build a 50,000 hl brewery in Hamburg’s trendy neighbourhood Schanzenviertel.
Interestingly, in April this year, Carlsberg Group and Nordmann Group formed a 50:50 joint-venture for the distribution of beer and beverages in northern Germany. The new company, NordiC Getränke, will have 700 employees and a turnover of EUR 400 million and is headed by the former Warsteiner Brewery GM Frank Spitzhüttl and Thomas Dombrowski, the former Holsten HR exec, it was reported.
Nordmann Group, which had 1400 employees, moving 4.2 million hl of beverages annually and achieving a turnover of EUR 650 million, did not bring their whole business to this joint venture. Excluded, for example, is their brewery in Stralsund, which they bought in 1991.
