Deutsche Umwelthilfe, an environmental pressure group, on 4 July 2012 took on Radeberger, Germany’s major brewer and Corona Extra importer, over allegedly not shipping empty Corona bottles back to Mexico for them to be refilled, despite charging German consumers a deposit of EUR 0.08 per bottle for doing just this. Had Radeberger declared the Corona bottles to be non-refillable, which Deutsche Umwelthilfe suspects they really are, the brewer would have had to charge consumers a higher deposit of EUR 0.25 per bottle.

Ziemann has applied for the opening of insolvency proceedings at the local District Court of Ludwigsburg. The Stuttgart lawyer Dr Tibor Braun was appointed as the provisional insolvency administrator. The objective of this proceeding is to successfully complete the sales process for the company, which was initiated five months ago. In November 2011 the shareholders of Ziemann transferred their shares to trustees, the lawyers Mr Volker

Russian Roulette

When the going gets tough, the tough get going! So you thought. Not in Russia. When the going gets tough, the tough point fingers, place blame, and shake a fist at the government. What a sorry show brewers in Russia have put on these past few years. While beer production continued to decline, brewers knew no better than to quibble over alleged market shares; accuse each other of excessive price promotions and bemoan the fact that the government’s prohibitionist policies were taking all the fun out of doing business in this vast country. Perhaps the time has finally arrived for the tough to get going. The combination of Efes and SABMiller certainly looks like a start.

The news that the Royal Dutch Hotel & Restaurants Association (KHN) has sued Heineken, Grolsch, Bavaria and AB-InBev for compensation after the four formed a trust between 1996 and 1999, has made headlines in various Dutch and Belgian newspapers.

The Basle publicans' association has stepped up its campaign against Carlsberg: miffed that they are charged what they consider rip-off prices for locally produced Carlsberg beer and Coca-Cola products, the association decided to self-import these beverages from neighbouring countries where they are much cheaper. On 30 May 2012 they held their first ex-works sale of 100,000 bottles of Carlsberg and Coca-Cola to local restaurateurs. They sold them at a discount of 51 percent and 57 percent respectively to locally available produce.

In May 2012, Punch, which is Britain’s biggest pub operator with some 5,000 pubs, has reportedly started talks to reduce its GBP 2.5 billion (USD 3.9 billion) debt pile, which will lead to an acrimonious battle for control of the company.

As we saw in Australia earlier this year, the alignment of brewers often leads to a re-shuffling of brand licenses. Following the line-up of SABMiller and Turkey's Efes, Carlsberg decided to use a clause in the contract with SABMiller which forces SABMiller to hand the Holsten brand over to Carlsberg's Baltika.

Shareholders of Baltika Breweries, which is majority-owned by Carlsberg, have until 9 August 2012 to accept a voluntary offer for their shares. The voluntary offer is conditional upon the Carlsberg Group increasing its ownership to more than 95 percent.

Who would have thunk - AB-InBev officially rules out certain takeover scenarios? Jo Van Biesbroeck, 55, the Chief Strategy Officer of AB-InBev, has defied rumours that the world’s number one brewer is keen on taking over SABMiller or PepsiCo. Although experience shows that a strategist who comes clean on the truth is actually a contradiction in terms, Mr Van Biesbroeck, in an interview with the Belgian newspaper De Tijd on 29 May 2012, said that "while we always look for opportunities [for deals], our focus is now on internal growth." So organic growth is it for AB-InBev. Hark his words.

It’s probably the same people who can hear the grass grow that have launched the recent rumour that some industry bigwigs are considering a bid for Irish drinks group C&C, the maker of Bulmers and Magners cider and Tennent’s lager. Actually, they have just rehashed speculation that has been flying around for over two years. In May 2012 the story that SABMiller, Carlsberg and Molson Coors (why not Heineken, too?) may have been nosing around C&C made some ripples in the Irish media. Still, none of the companies has been in direct contact with the board of C&C or made a final – and public – decision on whether to pursue a bid or not.