E-Malt.com News article: Zimbabwe: SABMiller’s Delta Beverages achieves 30% growth in lager volumes in H1 to September, 30

Delta Beverages lager volumes grew by 30 percent in the half-year to September 2011 propped up by its massive capital investment in capacity upgrades, All Africa reported on October, 24.

The growth in Delta's lager volumes spurred overall volume growth for global brewer and part shareholder SABMiller, which holds 36,9 percent equity in the Delta.

SABMiller's 2011 large volumes half-year exceeded the 2010 volumes, for the interim to September 30, by 3 percent.

The global liquor brewer said Castle delivered 11 percent lager volume growth with good performance noted in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Cameroon.

Local volumes grew on the back of a US$133 million capital investment in new lager and soft drink plants and a US$67 million capital injection in 2012 would take total expenditure over the last three years to US$200 million.

Delta, the brewer of Castle, Black Label and Lion lagers, has indicated it would bring forward the commissioning of a new beer packaging line for Southerton to July/August 2012 instead of July/ August 2013.

In Zimbabwe, sparkling beverage volumes showed strong growth despite the price adjustment (of approximately 20 percent), which was effected in June 2011.

Delta commissioned a new soft drinks returnable glass bottle packaging line in August 2011 and this is expected to resolve the constrained capacity on the 300ml bottles.

The total cost of the line was approximately US$13 million and increased the available capacity to 2 million hectolitres.

Earlier, it had installed new lager beer and soft drink packing lines in Harare and Bulawayo.





26 October, 2011