{"id":4160,"date":"2017-06-06T06:00:20","date_gmt":"2017-06-06T11:00:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/?p=4160"},"modified":"2017-06-05T08:21:46","modified_gmt":"2017-06-05T13:21:46","slug":"the-beer-monopoly-chapter-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/?p=4160","title":{"rendered":"The Beer Monopoly, chapter 2.."},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Beer<\/a>The book, The Beer Monopoly<\/u>, by Ina Verstl and Ernst Faltermeier, goes into detail regarding how the four largest beer companies, ABI, SABMiller, Heineken, and Carlsberg, landed their current positions. The historical perspective of each company is well detailed, going back to the starting foundations of each organization.<\/p>\n

What makes this book even more fascinating is how the authors focus on each company\u2019s long-term business strategy and culture. \u00a0In other words, what makes each of the four companies tick! \u00a0Being in the industry for a number of years, we are familiar with the history of each of the four companies discussed, yet the book adds additional depth by carefully detailing the formation of each.<\/p>\n

ABI\u2019s modus operandi, as we all know, is acquiring companies and cutting out the fat, along with a great deal of bone. \u00a0ABI\u2019s business model is not to grow by building brands, as their performance record indicates, but, rather, growing by swallowing companies. \u00a0ABI is a highly centralized and controlled company.<\/p>\n

SABMiller, now part of ABI globally, and after becoming successful in South Africa, focused on being acquired by InBev. In anticipation of this move, SABMiller relocated their corporate headquarters to London and, for the most part, ran a decentralized model which understood that brands were local, not global. \u00a0SABMiller focused on building successful beers, and it worked well for them, having sold to ABI last year.<\/p>\n

The Heineken and Carlsberg stories are somewhat more complicated, in that both are privately owned entities, and have different purposes. \u00a0Heineken, controlled by a family with many shareholders, was the first brewery to focus globally. They approached this model by identifying breweries, or JVs, with other breweries in multiple key countries. Heineken’s recent acquisition of Femsa, from Mexico, was instrumental in the company\u2019s long term global survival. \u00a0Heineken, like ABI, is a highly centralized organization with key markets run by Dutch management. \u00a0Heineken\u2019s ownership structure would make it difficult for another company to acquire them.<\/p>\n

Carlsberg, unlike Heineken is owned by a foundation that supports a number of individuals. \u00a0Also highly centralized, Carlsberg took a risk and focused on owning the Russian market. \u00a0Carlsberg invested heavily only to see that country highly tax and regulate the alcoholic industry. \u00a0Even though Carlsberg is in control of the beer market share in Russia, overall volume has collapsed. Carlsberg has little focus and presence in North America. \u00a0Carlsberg ownership structure is also such that any attempt to acquire it would be very difficult.<\/p>\n

The world growth markets, according to The Beer Monopoly<\/u>, are Africa and China.\u00a0 The later, however, has not become the volume provider many breweries believed it would. There is, however, hope for Africa. \u00a0When looking to the future, globally, it is clear that few, if any, opportunities exist to buy into a country like these four brewing powerhouses have done in the past. \u00a0The big boys are simply no longer there.<\/p>\n

So the question remains, at least in the short term, will these breweries be focused\u00a0on the craft segment, and those opportunities flourishing in the industry? \u00a0Based on what we have seen from Lagunitas, Ballast Point, Goose Island and others, it is working, just on a smaller base.<\/p>\n

The book examines the industry today. Rest assured future chapters will be even more interesting. \u00a0The Beer Monopoly<\/u>, chapter 2……<\/p>\n

Editors note; \u00a0RIP; James “Jim” Barrett, the last in a long line of Schlitz Gulf Division managers for Texas when it was the largest state Schlitz \u00a0had. \u00a0Jim served in WWII in the navy and spent his entire professional life with Schlitz. \u00a0Jim retired with his wife Barb, to Granbury, Texas shortly after Stroh took over Schlitz in the 1980s. \u00a0Jim was 90.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The book, The Beer Monopoly, by Ina Verstl and Ernst Faltermeier, goes into detail regarding how the four largest beer companies, ABI, SABMiller, Heineken, and Carlsberg, landed their current positions. The historical perspective of each company is well detailed, going back to the starting foundations of each organization. What makes this book even more fascinating […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_s2mail":"yes","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2xRTi-156","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4160"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4160"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4160\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4171,"href":"https:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4160\/revisions\/4171"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4160"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4160"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4160"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}