Kalnapilis is sold to Bryggerigruppen

Baltic Beverages Holding (BBH) plans to sell its 87% share of the Lithuanian brewery Kalnapilis to the Danish group Bryggerigruppen at a price of LTL 135.1 million (€37 million). The sale is in compliance with an Lithuanian competition authorities’ ruling which demanded that prior to the establishing of Carlsberg Breweries one of the three breweries owned by BBH and Carlsberg Breweries was sold. The sale is subject to approval by the authorities.
After the sale of Kalnapilis, the brewer Alus Svyturys, owned by Carlsberg Breweries, will be merged with Utenos Alus, owned by BBH. The Lithuanian competition authorities must also approve of this merger, which is expected to come in effect early next year. The new company will be named AB Svyturio-Utenos Alus. Tomas Kucinskas will be CEO..

For better or wurst

In the Wild West, they put up "Wanted" posters outside the sheriff’s office if they were looking for an outlaw. These days they put "Wanted" posters up on the Web. Anheuser-Busch, whose sales in Germany have been hampered by the fact that the Czech brewer Budjovicky Budvar has secured the rights to the Budweiser name here, launched a Web-based "Wanted" campaign in August in an effort to find a new name for its famous beer. As a consequence of the trademark dispute, Budweiser is sold under the somewhat awkwardly named label "Anheuser-Busch B" in Germany. By its own admission, Anheuser-Busch distributes 10,000 hl of Anheuser-Busch B annually. Berlin residents were invited to post their suggestions for a new name to www.biername.de..

Who’s next

Miracles do happen and pigs do fly. Come the year 2001 and suddenly the German beer market seems to be the place where all the action is. With Heineken and Interbrew having entered the market amid sounds of thunder and lighting (and gnashing of teeth one might add), it looks like that there will be a flurry of activity in many a bank’s M&A department in the years to come.
A market report by Stuart Price, the beverages analyst at West LB Panmure, which sports the ironic subtitle "the land the industry forgot" gives plenty of reasons why voracious global brewers by the name of Anheuser-Busch, Carlsberg, Guinness, Heineken, Interbrew, SAB and S&N might be tempted to carve out a piece of the German market for themselves. It did not. It does not.e. into foreign markets.price@westlbpanmure.

Germans do it ... Themselves

At the beginning of October, Henninger Brewery was sold to Binding Brewery its (literal) next door neighbour in Frankfurt.
The sale of Henninger came as a surprise to most market observers as it was only in June that Binding, Germany’s number 2 brewing group (10 million hl in 2000), announced plans to kill unprofitable regional brands and mothball several brewing streams. Binding, a subsidiary of Dr Oetker concern, admitted to problems in its Dortmund brewing subsidiary DAB, in its Polish and Czech subsidiaries and its Berlin beverage retail chain Getränke Hoffmann.
Why Binding has agreed to take on Henninger, a regional brewer with a portfolio of standard brands in permanent decline? Your guess is as good as ours. But the sale has put an end to these speculations..

Board reshuffle

Carlsberg Breweries announced that Flemming Lin-deløv stepped down as CEO at the end of August and was replaced by Nils S. Andersen (43). Lindeløv has since taken up
the position as CEO of Royal Scandinavia, a company associated with Carlsberg. Carlsberg Breweries recently reduced ist 65% stake in Royal Scandinavia to 28% and intends to sell the remaining shares eventually in an effort to focus on its core beer and beverage business.
Lindeløv’s departure was accompanied by a rejuvenation, a widening of national diversity, and a scaling down of the ex-ecutive board from previously five to three members now. His colleagues in the Executive Board are Paul Bergqvist (55), the former President of Pripps Sweden, and Bjørn Eric Næss (47), the former CFO of Orkla..

Boortmalt invests in malting plant

In Nova Gradiska, 120km to the east of Zagreb, the Belgian company Boortmalt invested almost US$23 million in a new 50,000 t malting plant (including infrastructure) which was officially opened this summer. The malting technology, acronymically called GKV (germination kilning vessel) was provided by the German company Seeger. As early as 1997, Boortmalt bought a stake in the one and only Croatian malting facility (18 000 t) which was constructed 30 years ago and whose malt quality was beginning to leave a lot to be desired for. Although the new malting plant, Slavonija Slad, was built without any Croatian government guarantee or credit arrangement, the risk associated with an investment of this sort seemed negligible. There are only three malting plants in Serbia..

Bye, then

lair Shier (43) has been replaced as president of Molson USA by David Perkins, formerly president of Molson’s Ontario and western Canada division, after only eight months on the job.
Shier has held senior positions with Molson since the brewer acquired his previous employer, Carling O’Keefe Breweries in 1989. He was appointed president of Molson USA in January after Molson bought back control of its US business from Miller Brewing Company and Foster’s Brewing Group. Perhaps Shier should have studied the Greek story of Sisyphus - the story about the poor guy who for all eternity has to push a heavy stone up a hill only to see it rolling down again when he has almost reached the top. Then he would have known what his brief was..

Vive la France

What a blow to the Grande Nation’s pride the news must have been that Australian wines were about to overtake French wines in UK supermarket sales. However, order was restored when in the first four months of this year, French winemakers increased their lead over OZ producers in British shops. French wine accounted for 23.1% of the value of still wine sales, while Australia’s market share dropped to 19.2% from 21.5% at the end of 2000.

Topvar’s beer sales up

Topvar Brewery, Slovakia’s third largest beer producer, reported sales of 604,000 hl beer in 2000, up from 588,000 hl the previous year. The brewer also sold 75,000 hl of Topvarkofa, a cola-like soft drink. Topvar Brewery is owned by its management (51%), workers (34%) and the Topolcany municipality (15%).

Efes to double capacity

Turkey’s Efes Beverages group plans to double production capacity to 3.0m hl beer at its Moscow brewery in which Efes holds 91% of the stock. The company plans to apply for a US$17m European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) loan.