Is it tit for tat? Heineken’s controlling shareholder, L’Arche Green, was forced to increase its stake in the Dutch brewer in September 2017 by buying EUR 200 million (USD 235 million) of the EUR 2.5 billion in shares, which were put up for sale in a surprise auction by Mexico’s FEMSA after the partners fell out earlier this year over distribution rights in Brazil.

Western brewers had better brace themselves for more restrictions and continuing struggles. As the President of the Barley, Malt and Beer Union, Alexander Mordovin, said at drinktec in Munich last month, it’s the explicit aim of his country’s government to bring the foreign brewers’ beer market share down to 50 percent to boost private Russian breweries. Five international brewers (Carlsberg/Baltika, Heineken, Efes, SABMiller and InBev) controlled 96 percent of the Russian beer market in 2006. Today the remaining three – Carlsberg/Baltika, Heineken and AB-InBev/Efes – share 72 percent.

Britain will end the free movement of labour immediately after Brexit and introduce restrictions to deter all but highly-skilled EU workers. These proposals, set out in a Home Office document, were leaked to the Guardian newspaper on 5 September 2017 and drew criticism – not least from industry.

World-weary drivers are used to petrol prices which go up and down during a day for no apparent reason, while shoppers are used to supermarket prices which stay pretty much the same. All that, however, might be about to change thanks to electronic shelf-edge labels, which can adjust prices in real time. Electronic price tags are a fact of life in most larger stores in France and Scandinavia but not in the UK yet.

As the UK continues to sever its political ties with the EU, it was only fitting that the Institute of Brewing and Distilling (IBD), an organization with 5,000+ members, re-established its links to its continental constituents by organising a seminar in Salzburg.

For longer than most like to remember news coming out of Russia represented an unmitigated disaster for international brewers. Over the past eight years, Moscow has raised taxes on alcohol and banned advertising. In January 2017, finally, it began limiting the size of plastic beer bottles to a maximum of 1.5 litres.

SIBA’s “Assured Independent British Craft Brewer” seal was launched in August 2016 to make it easier for UK consumers to differentiate truly independent craft beer from that of the global beers, or other non-craft products.

Heineken’s takeover of pub group Punch Taverns will not face an in-depth competition probe after the brewer offered to sell pubs to address concerns.

Winegrowers and craft brewers use similar technologies and packaging, think in terms of smallish quantities, and like filling their products in elegant bottles.

What took them so long to see the light? Negotiations must have dragged on a bit because only on 9 August 2017 brewers AB-InBev and Turkey’s Anadolu Efes announced they have agreed to merge their operations in Russia and Ukraine in an attempt to strengthen their positions in those declining markets.