Turborg weathers the storm

United Romanian Breweries (URBB), which makes the Tuborg, Carlsberg and Skol beers, has recorded a 10% nine-month sales increase compared with the period of last year despite the rainy weather that hurt the beer market this summer.

“Our early-year estimates for our international premium brands turned out to be correct. From January to September we saw sales volumes grow around 10%,” announced Schachar Shaine, URBB chairman, though he chose not to reveal the nominal sales figures. The company’s turnover for 2003 was 44 million euros.

Market surveys quoted by URBB show how their market share has reached 8%, with Tuborg the leader among international beers in Romania. URBB’s total investments to date have exceeded $85 million.

“Considering the performance of sales up till now, we estimate that we will exceed 1 million hectolitres of beer by the end of the year. Our expansion is now in full swing: we recently installed three fermentation tanks that will help us achieve a yearly production capacity of 1.2 million hectolitres; and one of next year’s goals is to expand production capacity to 1.4 million hectolitres,” Shaine said.

He added that the beer market in Romania shrank by 2% this year, though the share of beer in the total consumption of beverages nonetheless grew due to a decline in consumption of all other types of beverages.

“URBB performed very well last year compared with overall market growth, a trend that continued this year as well. The company’s growth is all the more significant since it happened during a period of market growth following an increase in sales of PET-bottled beer. Since we have premium and superpremium brands, the increased sales of PET-bottled beer did not affect us,” Shaine explained.
stelian.negrea@zf.ro