Australia: San Miguel completes the sale of Australian brewery, J. Boag & Son, to Lion Nathan

Southeast Asia's largest food and drinks group, San Miguel Corp., said it had signed a definitive agreement to sell its Tasmanian brewer J. Boag & Son Pty. Ltd. to Australian alcoholic beverage company Lion Nathan Ltd. for A$325 million ($286 million), Philippine Daily Inquirer posted on January 3rd.

San Miguel's sale of Boag to Australia's second-largest brewer, comes as it aims to push into heavy industry, such as power, mining, infrastructure and real estate, to drive growth after dominating the home market for beer, liquor, dairy products, processed food and poultry for decades.

J. Boag makes Australia’s second-largest selling premium beer under the flagship brand James Boag’s Premium Lager. Its annual sales revenue grew to A$92 million in 2006 from A$61 million in 1999 before San Miguel’s acquisition.

San Miguel’s sale of J. Boag followed its sale of Australian dairy and juice manufacturer National Foods Ltd. to Japanese conglomerate Kirin Holdings Co. for A$2.8 billion (P101.44 billion).

Kirin owns 19.9 percent of San Miguel and 46 percent of Lion Nathan.

San Miguel president and chief operating officer Ramon Ang said proceeds of the J. Boag sale could be used for San Miguel’s plans to enter new businesses.

San Miguel has said it plans to venture into mining, infrastructure and other fields outside its traditional businesses.

Ang said: “While J. Boag is an excellent business with strong brands, San Miguel is in a process of redefining itself and injecting into our operations a higher return-on-investment-focused discipline. We are reassessing our priorities and reshaping our portfolio to include new businesses that we feel will give us higher margin growth in the near and medium term.”

Lion Nathan chief executive Rob Murray said: “This is an acquisition offering strong strategic value. J. Boag is a company with great brands and a reputation for brewing excellence and its market focus is highly complementary to Lion Nathan.”

“As owner of the J. Boag & Son brands and the distribution channel, we intend to leverage our sales coverage and focus our distribution reach to make these great beers available to more Australians,” Murray said.

04 January, 2008