Mozambique: SABMiller’s Mozambican subsidiary reports successful 2009, plans to launch a new beer

SABMiller Plc’s Mozambican unit grew sales volumes by 10 percent last year and now plans to contract farmers to grow sorghum so that it can launch a new brand of beer in the southern African nation, Bloomberg reported on March, 30.

The growth in volumes sold by the Cervejas de Mocambique unit was led by the Laurentina Preta brand, Mark Bowman, the head of the London-based brewer’s African unit, said in a March 25 interview in Maputo, Mozambique’s capital. The company will this year start a project to contract as many as 2,000 farmers to produce sorghum or cassava to supply its breweries, he said.

SABMiller last year spent $400 million opening new breweries in sub-Saharan Africa, including one in Nampula, in northern Mozambique. In a bid to reduce costs, the company is trying to secure supplies from domestic farmers to cut imports, such as the $50 million of barley brought in to supply its Mozambican breweries each year.

The farmers may earn as much as $3,500 each a year from the project. The sorghum will be used to produce a beer similar to the Eagle brand SABMiller sells in Uganda and other African countries.

Earlier attempts to have farmers grow barley in Mozambique weren’t successful, Grant Liversage, the managing director of the Mozambican unit, said.

Bowman declined to give precise figures on sales volumes, saying they will be released later this year. Laurentina Preta is the company’s fastest growing brand in Africa and is increasingly favored by female drinkers, he said.

“There are no cultural beer drinking barriers in Mozambique,” he said.

SABMiller has three breweries in Mozambique with plants in Maputo and the central city of Beira in addition to Nampula, according to its Web site. The company’s total brewing capacity in the country is 1.9 million hectolitres.

31 March, 2010