South Korea: Oriental Brewery facing increasing competition from rival HiteJinro

Oriental Brewery (OB), Korea's leading brewer, faces increasing competition in the local beer market from long-time rival HiteJinro, which has been catching up quickly due to soaring sales of its popular lager beer, Terra, at restaurants, bars and nightclubs, according to industry officials, The Korea Times said on March 27.

HiteJinro lost its No. 1 status in 2012 to OB, owned by the world's largest brewer Anheuser-Busch InBev (AB InBev), and has been unable to reclaim the top spot.

According to HiteJinro, Terra sales increased 11 percent year-on-year in 2022 to more than 1 billion 330-milliliter bottles for the first time. This is an 86 percent jump in sales volume compared to the first year Terra was introduced.

HiteJinro said sales of the popular lager beer soared last year thanks to the lifting of coronavirus social distancing measures in the country.

Sales of Terra at restaurants and bars increased 33 percent year-on-year and jumped 85 percent at pubs and clubs in 2022.

"It's hard to assess the overall market share of local beer sales, which is divided mainly into household (alcohol sold to individual consumers) and non-domestic (alcohol sold to bars, etc.) segments. But we assume that the ratio of household to non-domestic segments is 6 to 4 and our total market share came to 35 percent to 40 percent recently," a HiteJinro official said. "Of course, we are still behind OB, but we are catching up fast."

OB sees it differently. The brewer agrees it is hard to aggregate the overall share of the domestic beer market and claims that sales in the household segment should be the main indicator.

"Breweries in Korea don't sell beer directly to restaurants, bars and nightclubs but through wholesale vendors. Vendors don't supply beer products at a fixed rate. Sometimes they sell everything and sometimes they keep some in stock. So we have to look at the sales to households to calculate the brewers' market shares more accurately," an OB official said. "In this context, our main beer product Cass accounts for 42 percent of the local beer market. Terra accounts for only 19 percent at most."

According to market research firm Nielsen Korea, OB's Cass beer topped the domestic beer market with a 43 percent share as of January this year, while Terra took up 18.6 percent.

"Even if Terra's sales increase at some restaurants and bars, the sales gap between Cass and Terra remains wide," an OB official said.

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