Acatris sells brewery division

The Royal Schouten Group (RSG) daughter Acatris, based in Londerzeel, Belgium, has sold the assets and the business of the brewery division to Lupofresh Ltd. The sales consists of the Belgian and English hop-business of Acatris. On 4 October 2002 Lupofresh, a hop merchant and trader based in Kent, UK, will take over all employees of the brewery division and will continue the business under the former name "Morris Hanbury".
RSG acquired the brewery activities of Morris Hanbury (UK) and De Coninck (BE) in 1999. The disvestment of these activities are in line with Acatris’ strategy to focus on the markets for food and health ingredients..

It’s called optimisation ...

.. but it means the axing of jobs and the closing of plants. In an effort to bring down costs, Interbrew has put its 17 plants in Western Europe under close scrutiny. A report which was published by Interbrew in September, argues in favour of the closure of one brewery in the Netherlands (Breda) and the down-sizing of another in the United Kingdom (Manchester). Interbrew said that by re-locating beer production to Dommelen (The Netherlands) as well as to Leuven and Jupiler (Belgium), the 2 million hl brewery in Breda will become surplus to requirements over the next 18 months. 335 people will be made redundant, of whom 45 will find further employment within Interbrew’s Dutch organisation..

"A beer and a tenner, please"

In the old days if you were strapped for a bit of cash, you ran up a tab with your local publican. These days you cut out the publican and use a cash machine instead. But not the one down at the other end of the High Street but the one inside the pub. Punch Taverns, which is one of the biggest pub operators in the UK, is putting cash machines in 100 more of its pubs, after negotiating a bulk-buy deal with the manufacturer, Hanco of Milton Keynes. According to media reports, trials in 20 Punch outlets saw a 4.5 per cent rise in beer sales, as customers withdrew an average £40 and then spent £3.60 of that in the pub. The £1.50 fee charged each user means that pubs need only two people a day to use the machines to cover the £20 rent..

With brawn and brain

They should have known that Interbrew was not one to trifle with, certainly not after its spat with the UK’s competition authorities. Moreover, they should have been more cautious in their dealings with an antagonist who calls himself "The Leading Consolidator in the world beer industry". Consolidator? - doesn’t that sound like Terminator, Predator, an opponent with brawn and brain? Sorry, we have watched too many Arnold Schwarzenegger movies.
Interbrew took the news organisations to court in order to obtain the original copies and to find out more about their source. Surprisingly, Interbrew won the case. Even the House of Lords on 10 July 2002 re-fused the UK news organisations the permission to appeal. Watch this space..

No appetite for roses Wolverhampton & Dudley Breweries and the consolidation of the UK beer market part 2

"I am the hunter," cried the wolf as he slid down the chimney. "I’ll huff, and I’ll puff and I’ll blow your house away." "Sorry, you seem to have forgotten something," replied the little pig as he lit a fire to scorch the wolf’s tail. Fortunately life has not caught up with fairy tales yet. Wolves is alive and kicking, having fought off two hostile takeover bids between August 2000 and August 2001.

In order to survive the occasional low periods in the City, bankers console each other with the advice: "If you can’t take a joke, don’t work in the stock market." This advice does not only apply to bankers. CEOs too should take it to heart. But churning them out was not enough.
Nevertheless, hostile takeovers are still something of an anomaly in the brewing industry.
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The chicks have flown the nest

Once the family of peregrine falcons had left its nest, a team of abseilers climbed up on former Burton Brewery Maltings Tower in Burton’s town centre to replace Bass’ red triangle with the Coors sign, measuring 33 feet by 66 feet. The old Bass signs were offered to the Bass Museum in Burton in order to preserve a unique part of Britain’s brewing heritage. Plans to install the new red and white Coors signs had to be put on hold earlier this year (we reported) after peregrine falcons nested in the tower.
Coors waited until the protected birds had reared the brood and the chicks had flown the nest to replace the red triangle at 136 feet above Burton..

No sense of humour

Diageo has been banned from importing or selling any alcohol in Norway for 6 months starting 12 August 2002. Guinness UDV Norway, Diageo’s local subsidiary, was caught red-handed marketing Smirnoff Ice to consumers in violation of the country’s strict laws regulating the promotion of alcohol. Alcohol producers are allowed to promote their products to the trade but not to the public. Somehow several promotions spilled over into the public section. Ah well, some laws even apply to the world’s biggest drinks company.

Hail Ninkasi - holy cow!

Blame it on too much sun, too little beer or just the silly season. Or how could the Campaign for Real Ale (CAMRA) do this to us? At the Great British Beer Festival, which ran from 6 to 10 August 2002 in London, the campaigners unveiled a new “Goddess of Beer” to encourage women to try real cask ale, Britain’s traditional pub drink. Never mind that the goddess is older than The Mummy. She is also called Ninkasi after the Sumerian Goddess of Beer, who is said to have created her recipe for beer some 4,000 years ago and was worshipped by both men and women at a time when women brewed the beer and ran the taverns. Sorry gentlemen, that’s a naff idea. What is this poor lassie going to do for female consumers on the British Isles? Very little, it is to be feared. Same with females. Definitely..

See you again in court

The plans of Brazil’s AmBev to buy a 37.5 per cent economic interest in Quinsa seem to be off, at least temporarily as Heineken presses forward with its legal case postponing the Quinsa - AmBev transaction until at least 15 September 2002. In its ruling in connection with Heineken’s application for an interim injunction, a Luxembourg court has taken due note of the irrevocable undertaking made by Quilmes Industrial (Quinsa) S.A. to the Court in connection with the injunction in Luxembourg and the arbitration commenced by Heineken before the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC). The Luxembourg court however rejected Heineken’s request to order a longer freeze. to refrain from consummating the transactions with AmBev on an interim and permanent basis..

Litigious brewers

Two groups of competitors - one from Munich, the other from Cologne - won an interim injunction against Germany’s leading beer brand, Krombacher, in June 2002.
The injunction claimed that an environmental campaign by the privately owned Krombacher Brewery Bernhard Schadeberg would put customers under "psychological duress" to make them buy crates of Krombacher beer to save the African rainforest.
In April, Krombacher launched its rainforest project, an initiative to save millions of square metres of rainforest from extinction in Dzanga-Sangha in the Central African Republic (CAR), which was supported by the popular TV presenter Günther Jauch and the Worldwide Fund for Nature (WWF). At the end of July, Krombacher officially appealed against the injunction..