E-Malt.com News article: Ghana: SABMiller’s Accra Brewery seen as strategic impetus for expansion in West Africa

Accra Brewery Limited (ABL) says though it has a relatively smaller percentage market-share in the local beverage industry, its operations remain very critical to SABMiller, its Holdings Company, Citifmonline communicated on May, 26.

ABL in the local beer industry has a market share of approximately 30 percent. According to the company, it has proven to be a strategic impetus in the achievement of the broader vision of the group.

This, it says is evidenced by an investment of almost 40 million dollars in the past three years with plans for further investments in the next five years compared to its sister subsidiaries in other African countries.

Managing Director of ABL, Gregory Metcalf, attributes this goodwill to the prospects of ABL’s peculiar identity in their group’s operations.

“It’s one of our smaller businesses but it is also very important strategically because this is probably the most competitive businesses that we have and we are up against much larger competitors and we have the smaller market share so there is pressure on us to gain market share, probably more than it is on other businesses… for instance, if we had 90% market share, then there would be a different kind of pressure on our business,” Mr. Metcalf said.

“We have more of a priority around expanding our portfolio, innovating, getting into new markets like water, soft drinks, non alcoholic malts etc to expand our scale so it’s very important from a strategic point of view because we develop a lot from here and the group looks at that bright interest to see what’s successful and if it’s successful, it’s something they could take and implement elsewhere,” he added.

He added that against this background, the group intends using ABL as the launch pad for its expansion into the West Africa market.

He said, “As far as West Africa is concerned, Ghana has for a long time been SAB Millers only presence in West Africa as compared to some other parts of Africa where we have multiple presence.”

“We now have a small business in Port Harcourt in Nigeria and we’ve help in supporting that business as much as we can because we have a skills pool here with experience. That business is also geared up and growing, doing some of the things we have done successfully here, so obviously I think we’d like as a group to expand our presence in West Africa and I think this is a good spring board to do that,” he noted.


28 May, 2010