Poland: SABMiller is targeting 40 % market share in Poland

Beer giant SABMiller Plc is intending to increase its leading 37 % share of the Polish beer market to 40 % as the brewer outperforms its rivals in the world's tenth largest beer market, Reuters communicated on September 28th.

"Clearly we are targeting 40 percent market share, while we expect per capita consumption to rise from 82 litres to around 90 litres," SABMiller's managing director for Poland Mark Bowman told a briefing earlier this week.

Poland is SABMiller's fourth most profitable country after South Africa, Colombia and the United States, and Bowman expects that the nation's top three brewers will increase their overall market share at the expense of local players.

Last year, SABMiller which brews Lech, Tyksie and Zubr in Poland, increased beer volumes 12.6 percent in a national market up 5.2 percent and so extended its lead over Heineken (HEIN.AS: Quote, Profile, Research) at 33 percent and Carlsberg (CARLb.CO: Quote, Profile, Research) at 14 percent.

While he is taking market share off his rivals, Bowman has seen beer consumption rise to 82 litres per person per year currently from 79 litres in 2004 and expects it to rise to 90 litres in Poland which is towards the levels seen in some other west European countries such as Britain and Germany.

In 2004, beer consumption in Britain was 100 litres per person per year, Germans downed an average of 118 litres while the world's top beer drinking nation, the Czech Republic, managed 158 litres.

To cope with this anticipated rise, Bowman points out that work is already underway at one of his three Polish breweries, Tyskie near Krakow in southern Poland, to boost annual capacity to over 8 million hectolitres a year from 5.6 million currently.