Netherlands: Heineken is to expand its beer assortment for its home tap BeerTender

Dutch brewer Heineken is to expand its beer assortment for its home tap BeerTender in a bid to gain the initiative in the competition with a rival system, Expatica Dutch News informed on April 6.

Starting this month, beer lovers can enjoy Murphy's Irish Red, Affligem Blond and Wieckse Witte at home using Heineken's home draught beer system, the company announced on Wednesday.

At the end of 2006, Amstel Bock, Amstel 1870 and Brand Urtyp will also be available for the home tap. All these beers are now made by Heineken, but the brewery doesn't exclude the possibility of selling beers produced by other breweries in the near future.

Heineken sells Brand, Amstel and its own beer all year round for the home tap, while Wieckse Witte and Amstel bock were temporarily in the assortment last year.

Since the introduction of the BeerTender two years ago, 180,000 tap systems and more than 4 million beer kegs have been sold. The BeerTender is on sale in the Netherlands, Austria and Switzerland, but Heineken wants to expand it to other countries.

The BeerTender's major competitor is the PerfectDraft launched by Belgian brewery Inbev and Phillips in 2004. While Heineken is still arguing with Phillips about possible patent infringement, more than 30,000 PerfectDraft systems have been sold in the Netherlands, Belgium and Germany. Only Dommelsch, Hertog Jan, Grolsch and Bavaria can currently be tapped from the PerfectDraft.