Trend turns into phenomenon: PET bottled beer

When it was first launched on the market several years ago, few thought it would ever make it. The low purchasing power and the practicality of the bottle, however, have turned the PET (plastic bottles) bottled beer into a real success story on the Romanian market.
Although visible since 2000 and 2001, the PET phenomenon exploded on the beer market as late as last year, when Bere Mures, the company that opened this segment with its Neumarkt brand, doubled its sales and market share. The migration of the cheap beer consumers to PET was accelerated when the leading player Brau Union Romania stormed the market with its Bucegi beer last year.
The spectacular increase in PET bottled beer sales got Bere Mures 4.9% market share in 2002 (from 2.4% in 2001), placing it fifth among brewers in Romania, right behind the four international groups (Brau Union, Interbrew, SABMiller and Tuborg), which account for 67.5% of the total consumption.
The about $550 million beer market in Romania is considered one of the most competitive in Europe, with most of the major international players operating here since 1995-1997.
The growth of a Romanian company from scratch to nearly 5% can be therefore deemed as a surprise, particularly because nearly all the independent breweries (those not acquired by multinationals yet) have witnessed a decline in sales over the last few years.
Most of the players credit the low price and low buying power for the success of the PET bottled beer, given that the plastic bottle is not exactly the best available beer container.
Virgil Mailat, Bere Mures general manager, however, feels it is not the price that made sales go up from 273,851 hectolitres in 2001 to 558,243 hectolitres in 2002.
“The price of Neumarkt is not that different from the one of the brands held by the international companies on the similar segment. I, therefore, think the past years’ success is due to constant quality and to the container type, which is convenient for many consumers,” Mailat said.
The Bere Mures manager believes the positive trend of the company’s sales, at the expense of many multinationals operating on the same segment, is due to a strategy that has targeted the rise of the beers for the people from the very beginning.
“All this in addition to the fact that the major companies have not paid enough attention to this segment, which is increasing Europe-wide, as well,” Virgil Mailat added.
Another confirmation of the PET bottled beer success comes from Werner Scheindhofer, Brau Union Romania chairman.
“Bucegi was the fastest moving beer brand on the Romanian market in 2002. In only six months, Bucegi became number two on the basic market segment and keeps increasing rapidly to position itself as the leader. PET bottled beer sales registered a significant share in the total,” Schneidhofer says.