E-Malt.com News article: Canada: New prospects seen for SABMiller now that the partnership with Molson Coors is dissolved

"SABMiller is putting its own team on the ice now," Chuck Ellis, President of Restaurant Sciences LLC, was quoted by Market Wire as saying of SABMiller's prospects now that the company has dissolved its Canadian partnership with Molson Coors.

Restaurant Sciences LLC (Newton, MA) tracks on-premise food and beverage sales in the U.S. and Canada. "Our Q4 2012 sample of more than C$30 mln in beer sales for Canadian restaurants and bars looked at brand distribution. We were surprised by the depth of brand diversity in spite of AB InBev and Molson Coors' control of a combined 80 percent market share."

"Of the Top-25 on-premise beers in Canada, only Budweiser has a double-digit market share," said Ellis. "The Canadian market is an intensely competitive landscape with twenty-five brands having on-premise share-of-sales of 1 percent or greater." While Molson Coors has 39 percent of Top-25 on-premise sales by dollar (compared to 40 percent for AB InBev), SABMiller's Miller Genuine Draft makes up only 7.7 percent of the total.

"If SABMiller can combine good consumer marketing with a new distribution portfolio, they can improve on the position they had with Molson Coors," said Ellis. "AB InBev and Molson Coors have built beautiful brand portfolios in Canada. But with 9 of the Top 25 brands coming from outside these two Goliaths, there is an opening to coalesce a strong third beer distributor there. The on-premise channel has long been the brewer's platform for consumer trial and adoption, and will fuel overall growth."

06 March, 2013