The US-Canadian brewer Molson Coors Brewing Co is more inclined to make acquisitions than to sell assets, CEO Peter Swinburn was quoted as saying by Reuters on March, 17.

Even though Molson's business is concentrated in mature markets, Swinburn said Molson still favors developed markets for acquisitions rather than emerging markets as deals in developed markets give a quicker, less-risky return to shareholders.

"If we were to make any move, and we certainly don't have to in M&A (mergers and acquisitions) - anything significant would not be in emerging markets because it's too risky," Swinburn said.

Any deal has to add to earnings in the short term, be above the weighted average cost of capital and give a good shareholder return quickly, he said. It is harder to get over these hurdles for emerging-market acquisitions, the CEO believes.

"Would we make a big bet on developing markets as a next move? No. Any deal that we do it has to be accretive short-term," Swinburn added.

In its last big overseas investment, Molson bought Brazilian brewer Kaiser for $765 million in 2002, but after a tough time and following its 2005 merger with Coors, the brewer sold Kaiser to Mexico's FEMSA for a dramatically lower $68 ...More Info

Chilean brewer Compania Cervecerias Unidas SA (CCU) announced on March, 17 its consolidated financial results, stated under IFRS, for the fourth quarter as well as for the full year 2009.

“The year 2009 was very positive for CCU,” the company said.

The brewer’s total net sales decreased in the fourth quarter of 2009 0.7% to Ch$231,562 million as a result of 3.7% higher consolidated volumes (organic growth) and 2.7% lower average prices in nominal Chilean pesos. Full-year net sales increased 9.3% amounting to Ch$776,544 million, as a result of 3.7% higher consolidated volumes (organic growth) and 7.5% higher average prices in nominal Chilean pesos.

Q4 gross profit increased 2.3% to Ch$128,493 million as a result of 0.7% lower net sales, offset by 4.2% lower cost of goods sold (COGS) which amounted to Ch$103,070 million. Full-year gross profit grew 9.8% to Ch$411,446 million and, as a percentage of net sales, the consolidated gross profit increased from 52.7% to 53.0% when compared to 2008.

The company’s operating result increased in the last quarter of 2009 by 2.1% to Ch$44,204 million, whereas full year operating result grew 10.8% to Ch$137,382.

Q4 EBITDA increased 4.7%, to Ch$55,940 million and the consolidated EBITDA margin improved 1.3 percentage points, reaching ...More Info

The North American beverage sector has started to see some weak trends reverse, but pricey drinks are not likely to see the lofty growth that they had before the recession, Reuters cited an analyst on March, 17.

The U.S. beer category is poised to have a good second half of 2010, but much of that is due to its comparison with a weak second half of 2009, Stifel Nicolaus analyst Mark Swartzberg said.

January shipments of higher-priced imported beers rose, suggesting there has been an inflection point in beers as well, he added.

The biggest beneficiaries from a lift in imported beer sales would be Constellation Brands Inc and Grupo Modelo, Swartzberg said.

Constellation and Modelo have a joint venture that distributes Modelo's Corona and other beers in the United States. Modelo sued Constellation in late 2009 over marketing at their venture.

The current economic crisis impacted Romania’s beer industry, which registered its ¬first shrinkage in the last 6 years, from 20.2 million hectolitres sold in 2008 to 17.6 million hl last year, the Brewers of Romania Association reported.

Overall, in 2009 the nation’s beer market went down below the ¬figures registered three years ago, when 17.7 million hl were sold, the Association said.

Beer production dropped in 2009 by 13%, and so did the consumption per capita, which went back to the ¬figures of 2006 - 81 litres. As from 2004, consumption has been raising every year by almost 10 litres per capita, until 2008, when the trend slowed down to half of the average annual growth, reaching an average of 93 litres.

In ¬figures, last year’s exports raised from 0.06 mln hl in 2008 to 0.17 mln hl, while imports dropped from 0.5 mln hl to 0.17 mln hl.

2009 confi¬rmed the sales trends registered in 2008 on all segments of packaging, with just minor variations: PET accounted for 46.7% of beer sold, can - for 14.8%, bottle - 35.3% and draught – for 3.2%, the Association said.

According to official statistics data, Russia’s beer output declined by 29.2% during the first two months of this year as compared to the same period in 2009, the Union of Russian Brewers communicated on March, 18.

Industry experts explain the situation by the drastic increase in excise taxes on beer in Russia, which tripled as from January 1.

An anomalously cold winter has also negatively affected the nation’s beer consumption this year, experts said.

World barley production is expected to total 147.679 mln tonnes in 2009/10, USDA said in its latest World Markets and Trade report.

USDA’s February forecast for world barley output was 148.905 mln tonnes. The March forecast was decreased due to a reduced forecast for barley output in the EU, China as well as in some other nations.

World’s barley consumption forecast has also been lowered to 145.069 mln tonnes, whereas world barley trade is expected to total 16.980 mln tonnes in 2009/10 versus the 17.080 tonnes forecast posted last month.

A little stronger this week, France’s malting barley market has seen some transactions in spring varieties but the winter ones are still without buyer, La Depeche reported on March, 19.

Several deals involved barley of the 2009 crop, but the majority of dealers in crop 2010 continue to bide their time waiting for the sowings results.

French farmers are almost through with the sowing, whereas Germany has reported that barely a third of the areas planned have been planted to barley so far.

Koji Suzuki, Kazumaru Iijima, Kanta Sakamoto, Manabu Sami and Hiroshi Yamashita

J. Inst. Brew. 112(2), 173–191, 2006 ABSTRACT
Hop bitter acids play a major role in enhancing the microbio-logical stability of beer. However, beer spoilage lactic acid bac-teria (LAB) are able to grow in beer by exhibiting strong hop resistance. Recently two hop resistance genes, horA and horC, have been identified in beer spoilage Lactobacillus brevis ABBC45. The horA gene was shown to encode an ATP depen-dent multidrug transporter that extrudes hop bitter acids out of bacterial cells. In contrast, the product of the horC gene confers hop resistance by presumably acting as a proton motive force (PMF)-dependent multidrug transporter. Strikingly, the homo-logs of horA and horC genes were found to be widely and al-most exclusively distributed in various species of beer spoilage LAB strains, indicating these two hop resistance genes are ex-cellent species-independent genetic markers for differentiating the beer spoilage ability of LAB. Furthermore the nucleotide sequence analysis of horA and horC homologs revealed that both genes are essentially identical among distinct beer spoilage species, indicating horA and horC have been acquired by beer spoilage LAB through horizontal gene transfer. Taken collec-tively, these insights provide a basis for applying horA and horC to the species-independent determination of beer spoilage LAB, including yet uncharacterized species. In addition to the hop resistance mechanisms mediated by multidrug transporters, pro-ton translocating ATPase and the ATP production system were shown to contribute to the hop resistance mechanisms in beer spoilage LAB by generating PMF and ATP that are necessary for survival in beer. Key words: Beer spoilage ability, hop resistance, horA, horC, horizontal gene transfer, lactic acid bacteria, species-indepen-dent genetic markers. Load full article, 19 pages, 2517kb , PDF file