“The Times” reported that the Belgian-based global brewer is seeking a buyer for Bass, once Britain’s best-selling beer, at around the GBP 10 million to GBP 15 million mark so that AB-InBev can concentrate on its bigger brands like Budweiser and Stella Artois.

Although the UK has been hit hard by the global recession, consumers still wanted to treat themselves to affordable luxuries. This has benefitted the Peroni Nastro Azzurro brand, which tries to differentiate itself from other premium brands through marketing activity not usually associated with the category. Peroni Nastro Azzurro has a design partnership with Alessi and a fashion collaboration with Antonio Berardi.

EBITA was up 17 percent in Latin America and 7 percent in North America, where SABMiller is a partner in MillerCoors. In Europe, however, earnings were down 8 percent as lager volume fell by 5 percent.

Despite the fact that almost every German brewer has beer mixes in his portfolio, it’s merely a good dozen or so brands which have reached any size and volume.

Carlsberg saw a drop in volumes of 7 percent during the first quarter of 2010 to 21 million hl, brought on by a steep decline in eastern Europe. While volume increased 3 percent in northern and western Europe, and 16 percent in Asia, excluding acquisitions, this could not fully offset an organic 27 percent drop in the brewer’s eastern European unit, which includes Ukraine, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, it was reported.

Günter Heyden, the long-time CEO of Germany’s Krombacher Brewery in his highly rated doctoral dissertation on the German beer market * argues that family-capitalist companies may suffer from the disadvantage of slow growth as they do not want to give up management control when merging with another company, but enjoy the advantage that they are not bothered by having to do complex integrations, which could put their corporate culture at risk.

Market observers say that Radeberger, a unit of Germany’s privately-owned Oetker Group, paid EUR 50 million for its 70 percent stake. Before its sales dipped, Bionade sold 200 million bottles (660,000 hl) in 2007. Radeberger admitted that the sales decline continued in 2009, but said that it hopes to increase volumes this year in the high single-digits.

The one million dollar question is: will Germany’s Turks rank patriotic concerns over image? In other words, will they go for an Efes because it’s a Turkish beer brand or would they rather drink Beck’s Green Lemon because it’s fashionable?

What is more, pubs also face aggressive competition from supermarkets which are feeding into a drinking-at-home culture and offering prices below that of pubs.

Isn’t it a lovely German euphemism: “gesundschrumpfen“. It translates as “shrinking yourself healthy.” Struggling companies employ it when they have to admit defeat and see no other way out than to downsize their operations in a major way. Carlsberg Germany is a case in point. Last year it sold its so-called Fighter Brand Unit including its Feldschlößchen Brewery in Braunschweig, announced that it was looking for a partner to help run its Feldschlößchen Brewery in Dresden more efficiently and began trimming down its brand portfolio to five brands only. Last but not least, it decided to limit its business to the northern part of Germany, to which end it formed a distribution joint venture – Nordic – with distributor Nordmann.