E-Malt.com News article: India: Carlsberg focuses on strong beers to grow bigger in India

Four years after it entered the country, Danish brewer Carlsberg has now swung its focus around to stronger brews to firm up its foothold in India even as competition heats up for its flagship brand, Financial Express reported on August, 20.

It is betting on the recently launched Carlsberg Elephant and last year’s entrant Tuborg Strong to win market share in a country where nearly 80% of the roughly 225 million cases (of 9 litres each) sold a year is strong beer, or beer with alcohol content of more than 5%. Both the products are priced higher than India’s top selling Kingfisher Strong from United Breweries (UBL), Haywards 5000 and Knockout from SABMiller India.

Earlier this year, Carlsberg also relaunched its Okocim Palone strong beer as Palone 8 priced at par with other beers.

“Two years ago, we were a company that was focusing quite a lot on the mild beer category with Carlsberg and Tuborg. If we want to grow bigger, we will have to be more active in the strong beer segment,” said Soren Lauridsen, MD, Carlsberg India.

The new focus has helped achieve a 55% growth in volumes between January and June 2011 compared with the same period last year and market share by volume has increased to 6% from 4% last year excluding Tamil Nadu, said Lauridsen. He added that the company would now focus on building the brands having completed its portfolio with the new launches.

Carlsberg does not share its sales volumes or revenue by region, but data from Euromonitor International, the London-based market research company, shows that it sold 52 million litres in 2010, up from 3.5 million litres in 2007 when it had just one brewery in Himachal Pradesh.

Over the past three years, it has added four more breweries in Rajasthan, Maharashtra, West Bengal and the latest one at Hyderabad which opened in December.

The company’s flagship brand, Carlsberg Green, still faces competition in the super-premium segment from the locally-brewed Heineken beer launched by UBL in Maharashtra during the last quarter. UBL, India’s largest brewer with market share of over 50%, plans to roll out Heineken into Bangalore, Delhi and other metros.

“We are already the No. 3 player in the market and our plans are on track to achieve our ambition of being the fastest growing beer company in India,” said Lauridsen. The Hyderabad brewery, coupled with a strengthened sales team, has helped increase market share in Andhra Pradesh, one of India’s largest markets for strong beer, to 4% from 1% last year, he said.

“We are in the process of considering some expansions and we are also looking at setting up more greenfield breweries. That depends on how our volume develops,” said Lauridsen.



24 August, 2011