Compania de Bere Romania (CBR), a unit of the world''s third largest brewer, South African Breweries (SAB) Miller and ranked third on the Romanian market, is planning to enter the fray on the PET-bottled beer segment with the Ciucas brand. The producer of this brand, Aurora Brasov, was taken over last year by CBR.
"We will launch the Ciucas brand nationwide, and it will be available in two product types: NRW returnable bottles and 2 litre PET packages. PET is a practical beer bottling technique, which grew strongly on the Romanian market last year," said Harry Ioncica, Ciucas brand manager.
By launching PET-bottled beer, as well as the Italian beer Peroni Nastro Azzuro beer introduced less than one week ago, the beer producer is following the two main trends on the market last year: spectacular growth for the popular segment (mainly PET) and changes and agglomeration on the premium and super-premium segment.
A survey by market research company MEMRB IRI shows that sales of PET-bottled beer enjoyed strong growth last year, both in terms of value (19.4% as compared with 12.2% in 2003), and particularly for volume (26.7% against 16.7% in 2003).
"Consumers have chosen PET-packaging because it is easy to carry, it takes up less storage space and has the advantage of not being returnable," said Ioncica.
Shortly after the takeover of Aurora Brasov in a deal worth 20 million dollars, SAB Miller climbed to second position on the market, but later slipped down to third position at end of last year. European Drinks, which was last year''s best performer on the PET segment and which climbed to fourth position in only one year, is still several percentage points behind SAB Miller. Aurora Brasov was one of the best performers on the market in 2003, when its sales rose by 26.8% to 664,000 hectolitres and it had a market share of 5.2%. SAB Miller owns 4 breweries - in Cluj-Napoca, Buzau, Timisoara and Brasov - and has a total capacity of 3 million hectolitres and around 1,300 employees.
Brau Union, which is part of the Heineken group and ranked fourth globally, continues to be market leader, despite a considerable correction in terms of market share. They are followed by Interbrew Romania, the local branch of world leader InBev; European Drinks; and, in fifth place, United Romanian Breweries Bereprod (URBB), the bottler in Romania of Tuborg and Carlsberg for Denmark''s Carlsberg group, the world number five. URBB is the only major player not present on the PET segment. stelian.negrea@zf.ro
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