USA | So this is AB-InBev’s take on localism in beer: change the label. Catering to Midwestern pride, the brewer will be selling its value brand Busch Light as a limited edition in select states with the cheeky label “Busch Latte”.

USA | Having made sweeping sustainability pledges, Coca-Cola and PepsiCo did the only logical thing and stepped away from a plastics lobbying group, the Plastics Industry Association, amid activist pressure.

Brazil | After years of investigations into the country’s biggest corruption scheme, “Operation Carwash” is still bringing up more dirt.

USA | Off-premise beer sales are up in the low single digit percentages this year, according to market research firm IRI. But this is thanks to flavoured malt beverages, or alcopops made from malt, which are included in beer statistics.

USA | After the abandoned IPA and the sale of Australia’s brewer CUB to Asahi in July 2019, AB-InBev must have felt compelled to issue some genuinely positive news, and pronto: The head of its incubator, ZX Ventures, Pedro Earp was giving interviews to CNBC and Bloomberg.

USA | It would be cruel to say that it was only a matter of time. But after another set of disappointing figures, Molson Coors’ CEO Mark Hunter is stepping down in September 2019.

USA | Despite the ambiguous name, Platform is not an e-commerce site but a brewery business. The firm from Ohio was fully acquired by AB-InBev on 7 August 2019. It will join AB-InBev’s US unit Brewers Collective as its newest craft partner.

USA | After months of arbitration due to concerns about Coca-Cola violating its agreement with Monster Beverage Corp, courts have ruled on 1 July 2019 that Coke can sell its brand-name line of energy drinks globally.

USA | Long time no hear from Stone’s “True Craft” investment fund. USD 100 million were put into its piggy bank in 2016 to create an alternative source of investment for craft breweries who did not want to sell to a Big Brewer. But the fund never clinched any deals and was recently scrapped.

USA | Glen Patrick Fox, a senior research fellow at Australia’s University of Queensland, on 1 July 2019, became UC Davis’ new Anheuser-Busch Endowed Professor of Malting and Brewing Science. Dr Fox succeeds Charlie Bamforth, who held the position from 1999 until his retirement last year.