E-Malt.com News article: UK: Czech Starobrno will be rolled out across UK by former Scottish & Newcastle employee

Roger Crosthwaite, ex-purchasing director with Scottish & Newcastle plans to bring to the UK the Czech Republic's number one beer as part of a new venture aiming to respond to the growing demand for premium drinks, Scotland on Sunday published October 28.

Crosthwaite, who has spent the past two years scouring Europe for small, premium, specialist beers, says his Linlithgow-based business, REC Brands, will roll out Starobrno across the UK early next year.

The 4.7%-strength Czech beer will be part of a small portfolio including Cintra beer from Portugal, Presidente from the Dominican Republic and Estrella Galicia from Spain.

Crosthwaite, who is a director of Falkirk football club and a former UK boss of Budvar, says he is hoping to replicate the success of brands such as Cobra which have grown - in the latter's case, mainly through the Indian restaurant network - from niche players into being major national brands.

He said: "In the last 10 years Eastern Europe has been opened up by cheap airlines and accession to the European Union. We want to use these new links to present the consumer with an excellent choice of Eastern European beers.

"We have spent the last 18 months sifting through the plethora of opportunities that have presented themselves and it has been surprising what we have rejected. Germany has an enormous number of beers but they tend to taste very similar.

"We are not chasing volume. What we want to do is introduce niche brands that have a different taste and a bit of mystery to the UK.

"Starobrno will do very well; it has a pale golden colour and a light woody taste. We will slowly introduce the brand through bottles and are planning to hit 250,000 cases in three years."

Crosthwaite's team will primarily focus on the on-trade - selling to pubs, clubs and suchlike - and small specialist retailers such as Majestic and Oddbins. They aim to grow Starobrno into a £500,000 brand in three years.

According to Datamonitor, the beer category in the UK was worth £1.5 billion in 2005, but only grew by a compound annual growth rate of 0.6% in value terms between 2001 and 2005. This weak level of growth is forecast to continue, with growth of only 1% CAGR forecast between 2005 and 2009.

The mature market has led brewers to release more products onto the market, many with innovative qualities, to try to encourage growth. But in recent years specialist beers have seen a marked sales increase in the UK. Last year M&M Sales & Marketing, which has imported beers to the UK for more than 26 years, added four specialist beers to its portfolio against just six in the whole of the late 1970s.

Bill Madden, managing director of M&M, said: "This market is now in high demand from drinkers who travel to places like Bruges in Belgium and get offered up to 300 different beers. They come back to the UK expecting to find these beers here.

"Our sales have increased 10-fold, even 20-fold in some cases. Speciality beers are now a serious part of the off-trade beer category."

Regional brewers have also successfully grown premium bitter brands such as London Pride and Bombardier, and Britain now boasts more microbreweries per head than any other developed country.


01 November, 2006