Tsingtao, the second-largest brewer in China by volume, said its net profit nearly doubled in the third quarter, as barley costs remained soft and China's beer consumption continued to recover, Reuters reported on October, 29.

The company said net profit rose to 615.18 million yuan ($90 million) for the three months ended September, from 318.69 million yuan a year earlier, according to a statement to the Shanghai stock exchange.

The brewer had said earlier this month that it expected profit for the first three quarters of the year to rise 75-85 percent from a year earlier, as it worked to explore the domestic market, improve brand integration and product mix and lower its costs.

Analysts are generally positive on Chinese brewers including Tsingtao due to a faster-than-expected recovery in China's beer market. They said Tsingtao's volume growth was basically in-line with the market.

UBS said last week that profit growth for top breweries in China would maintain their momentum from the first half as barley costs continued to come down in the third quarter while a lowering barley price for 2010 is likely a positive as well.

Asahi Breweries Ltd., Japan’s brewer No. 2 so far, announced its consolidated financial results for the first nine months of the fiscal 2009 on October, 30.

The company had a 0.2 percent drop in its nine-months net profit to Y4.72 bln as the poor weather cut domestic beer demand in its home country.

The company said its sales fell only slightly to Y1.079 trillion from Y1.080 trillion in the same period a year ago, while operating profit dropped 24% to Y53.27 billion.

Asahi’s total beer sales (including ordinary beer, low-malt happoshu and no-malt new genre brands) amounted to 128.8 mln cases, a 3% drop as compared to sales in January – September 2008. The company expects its total beer sales in fiscal 2009 to remain unchanged from last year’s volume of 181.5 mln cases.

For this fiscal year ending December, Asahi Breweries left unrevised its net profit outlook at Y50 billion. It also kept intact its operating profit outlook at Y88 billion with sales of Y1.508 trillion.

The company’s earnings are based on Japanese accounting standards.

Kirin Holdings Co. won back the top spot in the domestic market from Asahi for the first time in three years during the January-September period, thanks largely to ...More Info

China Resources Enterprise, Limited (“The Company” or together with its subsidiaries, “The Group”) announced on October, 29 that it entered into an asset swap agreement with its controlling shareholder, China Resources (Holdings) Company Limited (“CRH”). The agreement involves the Company’s transferring certain of its non-core businesses, being the entire textile division and minority interests in the container terminal operations, to CRH, plus the payment of cash consideration of HK$30 million in exchange for a hypermarket chain in northern, north-western, north-eastern and central China, and a brewery in Shandong Province from CRH.

This proposal, if implemented, will expand the company’s supermarket and brewery businesses while streamlining its existing operations through the disposals of two non-core businesses.

Although the total valuation of the assets to be received by the Company exceeds that of the assets to be received by CRH under the asset swap agreement by approximately HK$153 million, a discount has been given by CRH and the company will settle the difference by a cash payment of HK$30 million.

The acquisition of the Liaocheng Brewery fits into the Company’s national expansion plan for its CR Snow subsidiary to develop its distribution network and production capacity in Shandong Province. Liaocheng Brewery has an ...More Info

German breweries saw a 1.3 percent decline in beer sales during the third quarter compared to the July-September period of 2008, Federal Statistical Office communicated on October, 30.

Total beer sales amounted to 27.6 mln hl in the quarter, the statistical office said.

Beer mixes (beer mixed with cola, juice and other ingredients) showed a 2 percent sales increase in the third quarter to 1.3 million hectolitres. Beer mixes accounted for about 5 percent of total beer sales.

Domestic consumption accounted for about 85.7% of the total production. About 3 mln hl of German beer were exported in the third quarter of this year to the EU nations (minus 10.3%), whereas exports to third countries dropped just by 2.6% to 900 thousand hl.

The decline in beer sales is stabilising in the UK, but any recovery could be hit by measures in the Government's pre-Budget report next month, The Independent communicated on October, 29.

According to the British Beer & Pub Association (BBPA), total UK beer sales fell by just 0.8 per cent in the third quarter, year on year, which is a marked improvement on the 4.8 per cent slump in the second quarter.

However, 52 pubs are closing a week, Brigid Simmonds, the BBPA's chief executive, said.

"This is a fragile situation, that could well be jeopardised by the wrong decisions on tax in the forthcoming pre-Budget report."

Sales in supermarkets and shops rose 4.4 per cent in the quarter. While sales to pubs and restaurants fell 4.7 per cent this was the second-lowest rate of decline since early 2007.

Japan’s Asahi Breweries is on the lookout for partners in the Philippines and other Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) markets for its expansion in the region, Ryoichi Kitagawa, Asahi Breweries Ltd. general manager for the corporate planning department, was quoted as saying by The Manila Times on October, 29.

Kitagawa said Asahi has been “watching the Philippine market since last year,” adding that he has been visiting the country to look for potential partners.

“It has a lot of young people, so as a market it is attractive,” he said.

“We’re optimistic about the Asean market, but we don’t have a strong foothold,” he said, as the company is considering “whether to stay in the Thai market [or] go to other Asean markets” instead.

“We’re searching for a good partner in Asean. We’re thinking of the possibility of going with our existing Thai partner or with new partners,” he said.

At present, Asahi has a tie-up with Thailand’s Boon Rawd Group, whose Khon Kaen Brewery Co. Ltd. was licensed in 2002 to produce Japan’s best-seller Asahi Super Dry for the Thai and other Asean markets.

Asahi had envisioned its tie-up with the Boon Rawd—which manufactures Thai top seller Singha beer—to become the Japanese beer maker’s ...More Info

Latvia's beer market has shrank by nearly 11% in the first nine months of 2009, compared with the same period of time last year, The Baltic Course reported on October, 30.

An even steeper plunge is expected in the remaining months until the end of the year, chairwoman of the board at brewery Aldaris and at the Latvian Beer Producers' Association Inara Sure said in an interview.

In January – September this year, a slight 3.6% increase was registered in sales of strong beer; and 0.6% for sales of low price beer. On the other hand, sales of beer kegs for beer on tap at bars, pubs and restaurants plunged by 30%, Sure informed.

"There is a strong competition in beer market this year. Beer producers are even ready to sacrifice earnings to conquer an additional market share or save the existing one. The recession has made also the alcohol smugglers become more active, they are conquering the beer market with significantly cheaper smuggle beer from Latvia's neighbor countries," Sure said.

The beer industry representative expressed satisfaction over the fact that the next year's state budget plan does not foresee raising the excise tax on beer.

As reported, Aldaris posted LVL 3.32 million in profit ...More Info

European markets of malting barley have made a volte-face, following the example of feed grain markets, La Depeche posted on October, 30.

A decline in prices this week has reduced buyers’ interest. Buyers are waiting for a further decline in pices, analysts believe.

J. Novak, G. Basarova, J. A. Teixeira and A. A. Vicente

Abstract:
J. Inst. Brew. 113(3), 249–255, 2007 The vitality and viability of industrial strains of Saccharomyces cerevisiae was monitored during pilot plant experiments simulating yeast propagation under aerobic and anaerobic conditions. Industrial wort of 12°P original gravity was used as a growth substrate for yeast propagation. The work was carried out with three widely used Czech lager yeast industrial strains: strains 2, 7 and 95. Cell cycle, cell size, granularity, glycogen content, DNA and protein content were analyzed by flow cytometry. Significantly higher specific growth rates, higher content of yeast glycogen, earlier G2/M phase cells maximum, and faster cell protein creation was observed under aerobic conditions compared to anaerobic. Strains 7 and 95 showed losses in flocculation ability after aerobic propagation compared to anaerobic propagation. Under either aerobic or strictly anaerobic conditions, only strain 2 did not show a significant loss in flocculation ability. Key words: Cell cycle, fluorescent methods, proteins, yeast glycogen, yeast propagation. Load full article, 7 pages, 1265 kb , PDF file