Germany: Holsten-Brauerei AG announced on October 21, 2004 that Carlsberg Deutschland GmbH, which now holds 98.14% of the shares in Holsten-Brauerei AG, is planning to squeeze out the company’s minority shareholders.

A resolution for the transfer of the remaining shares in return for a fair cash payment will be submitted for approval at an Extraordinary General Meeting to be called in the near future. The level of the cash payment has still to be decided.
The Holsten group is one of the front-runners in the German beverage manufacturing market with a global production volume of 12.9 million hectolitres (hl) of beer and soft drinks and value sales of €752 million in 2003. In March 2004 it became part of Carlsberg, the world’s fifth largest, internationally active brewery group.

The group's beer business was started by the Holsten-Brauerei AG, a brewery founded in 1879 in what is now the Altona district of Hamburg. Over the next 125 years, this company grew into one of Germany’s leading brewery groups pursuing a broad, multi-brand strategy in its domestic market and doing a flourishing business elsewhere through exports and licensees. In addition to the Holsten brewery in Hamburg, the group also includes the Mecklenburg brewery in Lübz, the Feldschlösschen breweries in Dresden and Brunswick and the Landskron brewery in Görlitz. The König brewery in Duisburg and the Licher brewery in the state of Hesse were also Holsten subsidiaries until their disposal in mid-2004. The group’s 2003 beer sales totalled around 9.1 million hl (5.6 million barrels), of which 7.6 million hl (4.6 million barrels) were sold in the domestic market and some 1.0 million hl (611,000 barrels) exported to 90 different countries. In addition to the group's own production, 0.6 million hl (366,000 barrels) of Holsten beer were brewed under licence in Russia, Hungary, England and the Dominican Republic.

27 October, 2004