The Danish Brewery Group A/S (Bryggerigruppen), Denmark's number 2-brewery group in terms of size, expects pretax profit for 2003 to reach between DKK210m (US$35.6m) and DKK235m, according to Dow Jones. The company plans to publish its full-year results on 17 March. Bryggerigruppen is planning a major advertising campaign and new products to boost its market share, the brewer’s chief executive Poul Moeller revealed. Moeller declined to say how much money the company will spend on promotion.

In January, press reports from Denmark suggested that Carlsberg was slowly losing market share in its home market. Last week reports said that Bryggerigruppen was joining forces with a brewer in Norway and one in Sweden to challenge Carlsberg’s leading position in the Scandinavian markets.

In 2002, Bryggerigruppen posted pretax profit of DKK228 million and a net profit of DKK153 million from DKK2.78 billion in sales.

11 February, 2004