Ursus sales down, but market share is up

SABMiller, one of the world’s largest beer producers, whose
brands on the Romanian market include Ursus, Timisoreana, and
Ciucas, saw an 18% decline in the volume of sales in the last three
months of last year, compared with the similar period of 2008, but
the company boosted its market share, to almost a third of overall
beer sales in Romania. “Organic volumes fell by 18% after rising
11% in the similar period of 2008. However, we boosted our market
share, which reached an average of 31.3% (according to MEMRB Retail
Audit Data). The results are in line with the industry’s downward
trend – a decline by over 15% in the last three months of last
year,” Stephan Maria Weber, president of Ursus Breweries, the
Romanian subsidiary of South-African SABMiller, told ZF. Weber adds
that all the company’s brands either saw a rise or preserved their
market share. Company representatives did not however reveal the
value of sales recorded in the first nine months of the last fiscal
year (April to December) and did not say if the value of sales was
on the rise or not.