India: Carlsberg to enter India with Okocim Palone
Beer giant Carlsberg is set to uncork a surprise in India, Times News Network reported June 13. The Danish brewer’s local arm, South Asia Breweries, has chosen its east European brand, Okocim Palone, for the India debut. The global brewer will hold back unleashing its eponymous flagship beer, Carlsberg, in India for the time being.
Sources said Carlsberg was in the midst of rolling out Okocim Palone, a Polish beer carrying less than 8% alcohol, in Himachal Pradesh and in completing registration with the excise administration in Delhi.
It will be positioned as a strong beer against UB’s Kingfisher Strong and SABMiller’s Haywards 5000. Carlsberg has just completed the acquisition of Himneel brewery in Himachal Pradesh, and is coming up with a greenfield project in Rajasthan.
Some industry observers said the choice of brand name, with its heavy east European skew, for the India foray was a huge surprise while others said the market is bound to get familiar with names like Stella Artois or Coors as well soon.
Palone will be the beer behemoth’s first locally-bottled beer in India, even though the name of Tuborg, part of Carlsberg’s Nepal operations, also showed up in between. Carlsberg declined to comment.
It is learnt that Carlsberg could have decided on Palone brand as market research suggested that this brew comes closest to Indian palate.
In context, it may be noted that SABMiller recently unveiled its premium Italian beer Peroni in the domestic market through the import route. Further, the mainstream Indian guzzlers, with unique taste preferences, have not yet embraced the foreign bitters overwhelmingly.
Palone beer is expected to weather early battles with more prominent global peers like Budweiser (Anheuser-Busch), Foster’s (SABMiller), Tiger (Asia-Pacific Breweries), Coors (Molson Coors) and Stella Artois (or Beck’s from InBev).
The top six to seven global brewers are gradually getting a foothold in the domestic beer market and in the last one year, A-B, InBev, Carlsberg and Asia-Pacific Breweries have firmed up plans while Molson Coors is still at market research stage. SABMiller and Scottish & Newcastle already have a significant market share, with the latter being an equal shareholder in United Breweries (UB).
India is touted as the last potentially big beer market with consumption vaulting at robust double digits. In FY’07, overall domestic consumption touched 136 million cases (of 7.8 litre each) growing at 25-28%.
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