Dutch brewing giant Heineken has struck a deal to acquire Czech brewer Drinks Union, which will boost Heineken’s share of the Czech market from 9% to 12%.
The company cites “considerable growth opportunities in the Czech market” as the reason for the acquisition.
Drinks Union owns the popular Zlatopramen brand and three regional brands, Breznak, Louny and Dacick. Heineken already operates Starobrno, Hostan, Zlaty Bazant, Krusovice and the Heineken brand in the Czech market.
Maybe more Czech drinkers will force Heineken to improve on their beer. As I recently found out Heineken already captured the international space http://www.bierandbars.com/?p=6
The question is: why bother?! I understand that Heineken is hemmorrhaging cash, as they have been steadily losing market share for years, but will it really make a difference to the bottom line to acquire 1 decent-size brewer and 3 regional breweries simply for a gain of 3% per year?!
As usual, Heineken is out of touch with the beer industry and the beer drinkers of this world.
It seems like everything they do is about 10 years too late. Keeping that in mind, they should be releasing a raspberry wheat ale in about 1-2 years…
Drink Better Beer.
Well, Heineken bought Krusovice brewery last year. There is about 700 thousands hectos of free capacity now, there will be a new hightway to Prague this year, free space to make it much bigger, one of the new brewery, Louny, is about 40 kilometres only away, other two, Zlatopramen and Breznak(both in the same city of Usti nad LAbem) another one hour drive by car only…
And the next competitor- Staropramen owned by Inbev is about 16 percent market share…so every percent make sense for Heineken in our country…