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June 1997 Home
Spring Cleaning Notes:
-- Canada and the US
-- Europe
-- Around the Globe
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Stephen Beaumont's Brewpub Cookbook |
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A Taste For Beer |
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Great Canadian Beer Guide |
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A World of Beer |
Spring Cleaning Notes: Around the Globe
-- The big beer war currently being waged in Australia now appears to be claiming casualties, as the Australian Financial Review reported on April 28 that Lion Nathan has suffered a dip in interim earnings of 20%, largely due, says the AFR report, to the "battering" the company has taken from the rival Foster's Brewing Group.Even while acknowledging that the company had just been through one of the toughest periods in its 140 year history, Lion Nathan chief executive Doug Myers was insistent that the result reflected past performance "and not the future." Lion Nathan's resiliency in the face of very difficult market times bodes well for the future, said Mr. Myers. He further stated that the "dramatic changes (that) have been made not only to our structure but also to the way we run the business...will improve our future performance and our returns to shareholders."
Regular SBWoB readers will recall that back in March, we reported that Lion was gearing up to offer a fierce challenge to Carlton & United Breweries, the brewing arm of the Foster's Brewing Group. Having lost significant market share to CUB over the past few years, Lion was apparently ready to wage a beer war on all fronts in order wrestle back some sales from their competitor.
It was unclear from Mr. Myers' remarks as to whether he felt that the war had been lost and that it was time for Lion to regroup or if the "dramatic changes" he mentioned were meant to include the competitive measures Lion took in March.
-- Bad news for those who look to Germany for beer drinking leadership: the Germans are consuming less beer on average!
According to an Associated Press story of April 22, Germans drank 3.26% less beer in 1996 than they did in 1995. And the production of their breweries was down as well -- 66 million gallons (250 million litres) less than in the previous year.
Still, German beer lovers remained prodigious drinkers, consuming 34.8 gallons (131.7 litres) per person in 1996. That's down 1.19 gallons (4.5 litres) from 1995, but still a hell of a lot more than the Americans who drank a mere 21.1 gallons (79.9 litres) apiece in '96.
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