Carlsberg to sell one of its breweries
The announcement came shortly after Carlsberg’ s divestiture of its Norwegian brewery Arendal. Carlsberg had said earlier that it intends to shut down breweries in Leeds in the UK and in Pori in Finland.
The sale of the German brewery is part of Carlsberg’ s adjustment strategy in Europe. Here some breweries are strategically more important than others, which will be shut down in the long-term.
In Germany, Carlsberg currently operates four breweries: the Holsten Brauerei (Hamburg), Mecklenburgische Brauerei Lübz GmbH (Lübz), Feldschlößchen Brauerei (Braunschweig) and Feldschlößchen Aktiengesellschaft (Dresden).
At the Braunschweig brewery, Carlsberg produces the Feldschlößchen brand plus a host of own-label brands.
The sale could be completed within the next month or so, local media report.
Carlsberg claims to have a 4 percent share of the German beer market.
Given the economic crisis and the decline in beer consumption, it is highly unlikely that there will be buyers other than brewers of economy beer brands, such as Oettinger and Martens from neighbouring Belgium.
Oettinger is Germany’ s most controversial brewery on accounts of its business model, which relies on the production of economy and own-label brands only for German supermarkets and discount chains. Oettinger does not do any advertising. Its beers are delivered directly to the supermarkets by its fleet of trucks. Which make brewery locations and their proximity to major German retail markets central to Oettinger’ s business efficiencies.
Oettinger is a privately-owned brewery with 1,100 employees. With a beer output of over 8 million hl in 2008, of which 6.6 million hl were sold in Germany alone, and revenues of EUR 420 million (all figures by its own account), Oettinger is one of the major brewing groups in Germany.
It has breweries in Oettingen (southern Germany), Gotha (eastern Germany), Schwerin (north-eastern Germany) und Mönchengladbach (western Germany).
The Feldschlößchen brewery in northern Germany would provide Oettinger with a brewery location in northern Germany.
Although Germany’ s beer market is expected to decline this year, Oettinger says it hopes to raise output 5 percent. Already economy brands, which retail at about 50 percent of a premium brand, have a market share of 25 percent, it was reported.
