Una birra, please

According to the British media, Scottish&Newcastle has cast desiring glances at Italy’s number 2 brewer Peroni in a takeover valued at £240m (US$341m). Both companies have already established ties. Last year, Scottish&Newcastle struck an agreement with Danone to buy its Kronenbourg beer business. When Peroni’s controlling families turned down the offer to buy back the 24% stake held by Danone, Scottish&Newcastle decided to make them an offer which they could not refuse.

Gothenburg brewery to close

Carlsberg Sweden, which was formed after the merger of brewers Falcon and Pripps, has started negotiations with trade unions to phase out production at the Gothenburg brewery (capacity 600,000 hl), a former Pripps brewery. Due to significant overcapacity in the industry, Carlsberg Sweden decided to close down one of its three breweries, which will leave it with breweries in Stockholm and Falkenberg only. The brewer hopes to complete negotiations by August at the latest so that production can be discontinued in April 2002. It is expected that 280 of Gothenburg’s 400 employees will lose their jobs. Of these 100 will be offered new jobs in Stockholm and Falkenberg.

Finalmente

The Spanish government has approved of Heineken’s proposed sale of two of its seven breweries and six brands to the Barcelona-based brewer Damm. Damm will take over the Madrid and Valencia breweries which have a combined capacity of 2.2m hl. The brands sold include Keler, Estrella del Sur, Victoria, Calatrava, Skol and Oro.
The sale of plants and brands had been the precondition for merging the El Aguila and Cruzcampo divisions. In 1999 Hein-eken acquired Cruzcampo from Diageo for more than €650m, attempting to merge it with brewer El Aguila. The merged company, Heineken Espana, would have had a share of 40% of the Spanish beer market - too much for the Spanish competition authorities. Rumour has it that in 1999 Damm was beaten by Heineken in the race for Cruzcampo..

BBH ups its beer sales by 43 %

The Scandinavian firm Baltic Beverages Holding (BBH) sold 18.29 million hl of beer in the former Soviet Union during 2000, 43.1 % more than in the preceding year. Sales totalled 14.34 million hl in Russia, 1.72 million hl in the Ukraine, and 1.99 million hl in the Baltic states. The company thus increased its market shares in Russia from 21.2% to 25.2%, and in the Ukraine from 14.4% to 16.9%. Its share in the Baltic states, by contrast, showed a slight decline. In the Ukraine, thanks to cooperation with PepsiCo, soft drinks production was upsized from 0.049 million hl to 0.24 million hl.
BBH produced 1.93 million hl of beer and other beverages overall in the Ukraine last year, a growth rate of 67 % compared with 50% in the preceding year.1% to €637 m.5%, and the Ukraine with 48%.8%.6%.

Rising sales for major breweries

The Slovaks are drinking more beer again. Following years of declining sales, output in 2000 from the country’s 13 largest breweries was 220,00 hl up on 1999’s level, at 4.52 million hl, a growth rate of 4.6 %. Beer exports rose by 1,000 hl to 117,000 hl (9.3%). The sales of small and medium-sized Slovakian breweries are not included in the above figures; there were further declines here.
Per capita consumption of beer in Slovakia, just under the 90-litre mark in 1999, a new low, is estimated to have again been approximately 90 litres in 2000. This is all the more remarkable in that beers with a low original gravity have been subject to higher taxes since the beginning of 2000 (230 SKK per hl instead of the previous 164 SKK). Heineken Slovensko’s success is particularly striking.s.s..

And another one

After months of deliberation, the Polish Ministry of the Interior has granted permission to Austrian brewer Brau Union to invest in Browary Warszawskie (BW), a Warsaw-based brewery. This decision will enable Brau Union to buy the BW shares which BW’s management bought from BW’s employees last year. Brau Union will take control of the brewery since it is purchasing almost 100% of the shares. The Austrian brewer is believed to have paid US$15.9m for BW. Brau Union also owns the Rzeszow-located Van Pur Brewery and the Bydgoszcz-located Kujawiak Brewery. It controls 6% of the Polish beer market and intends to produce 1.75m hl of beer this year.

Orkla’s new executive board

When Finn Jebsen (51) takes over from Jens Heyderdahl as President and Group Chief Executive of Orkla on 2 July 2001, Roar Engeland (41) and Dag J. Opedal (42) will join the board. Engeland currently heads Orkla’s department for corporate development. Opedal has previously held the position of Deputy Managing Director of Orkla Foods. The members of the Executive Board will report to Jebsen who will be respon-sible for the Chemicals and Financial Investments division and will continue to serve as Vice-Chairman of the Board of Directors of Carlsberg Breweries. The establishment of Carls-berg Breweries last year, in which Orkla has a 40% stake, represents a significant expansion of the Orkla Group. Group pre-tax profit in the first quarter totalled NOK596m.2m hl of beer and 2..

After action satisfaction

Tut, tut. Perish the thought. This is not about a smelly French cigarette cool people lit in the 60s after a pleasant "matinee", or what the envious Brits would call a bit of hanky panky, a legover job, or a roll in the hay in mid-afternoon. No, this is about Beck’s new brand claim "The Beck’s Experience." Beck’s is now all about "after action satisfaction"... the kind of satisfaction hard-working hedonists experience on a solitary island with a couple of bottles of Beck’s and a sunroof. Last year already Beck’s initiated the re-positioning of its brand as a hot and youthful item in Germany. In support of the repositioning as an aspirational brand, Beck’s raised prices and re-vamped its label.O.S. campaign in 2,500 German retail outlets..

Troubles abroad

If it had not been for the fierce price wars raging in the Polish beer market, German brewer Holsten’s year 2000 profits would have been significantly higher. With Heineken and South African Breweries challenging each other in the Polish streets (they have a 30% market share each), Holsten never managed to raise its
market share to 5% from the present level of 3.4%. On top of that, Hosten achieved a turnover of DM111m (US$48.7m) and a loss of DM17m in its Polish operations.
In Germany Holsten leads the market with a 10% share having recently bought the König Brewery and a stake in the
Licher Brewery. As a consequence, turnover rose to DM2.31 bn (US$1.0 bn), while profits dropped to DM11.8m (US$5.2m), due to the Polish fiasco and a high interest load. Operating margin was 3..

Royal match

The Queen of Beers and a Prinzregent. Albert Cramer, owner of Warsteiner Brewery (5.6m hl in 2000) and His Royal Highness Luitpold Prince of
Bavaria who owns Kaltenberg brewery (400,000 hl) have decided to found two companies dedicated to promoting Prince Luitpold’s brands "Prinzregent Luitpold Weißbier" and "König Ludwig Dunkel".
For some time, Warsteiner Brewery, whose brand Warsteiner uses the tag line "the queen of beers" has pursued a course of horizontally diversifying its product portfolio in order to offer its publicans more than just a pils. Hence Warsteiner bought into Miller Brewing Group’s German distributor and now Kaltenberg..