E-Malt.com News article: Nigeria: Nigerian beer market potential outweighs security risk - Heineken

Heineken NV, the world’s third-biggest brewer has said the potential of the Nigerian market outweighs the security risk caused by deadly bombings in Africa’s biggest economy, This Day Live reported on June 23.

“We know what it means to have a crisis and insecurity,” the president of the Amsterdam-based company’s Middle East and Africa unit, Siep Hiemstra, said in an interview with Bloomberg TV Africa, citing the company’s experience during civil conflicts in Rwanda and South Africa.

He added: “We also believe that if you are totally focusing on only the challenges and the things that are not going well, you totally lose focus on the promises, and the promises are huge.”

Heineken competes with London-based Diageo Plc and SABMiller Plc in Nigeria, where attacks by the Islamist group Boko Haram have left more than 4,000 people dead in five years.

Hiemstra said no beer company could consider itself truly international without being in Africa, as brewers are looking to tap booming economic growth in emerging markets.

Nigeria is the continent’s most populous country with about 170 million people.

Heineken is awaiting regulatory approval to merge its two Nigeria units, which would combine the country’s industry leader with the number three beer maker.

Nigerian Breweries Plc (NB) and Consolidated Breweries Plc would merge to “create a business that is more streamlined and more adapted to the Nigerian market,” Hiemstra said.

The Dutch company holds 54.1 per cent of Nigerian Breweries, which owns brands including Heineken and Star, and 53.8 per cent of Consolidated, the maker of Turbo King.

The Global Chief Executive Officer of Heineken, Jean-Francois van Boxmeer had in a recent interview his firm has sustained the success of the Nigerian Breweries for decades in terms of growth, noting that Nigerian breweries had succeeded difficult times before, emerging from that as a stronger company.

“And one of the things a lot of people do not know is that it is here in Nigeria with the help of Heineken that we have been developing the molten technique for sorghum allowing us to brew beer using sorghum instead of bailey and we can even make it 100 per cent of sorghum.

“We are not strictly for beer in Nigeria Breweries, we are also into products which use agricultural produce and so we will continue to look at that. I hope that within the coming years, Nigerian Breweries will be ahead of let’s say Heineken’s commitment in Africa to have by 2020, 60 per cent of our raw material locally sourced,” he had said.


25 June, 2014