Biggest Czech brewer heading again into Japanese hands

Japan’s biggest brewery group, Asahi Group Holdings, has won the bidding competition to acquire Plzeňský Prazdroj, the biggest Czech beer producer with an internationally recognised brand name.

Photo: Barbora Němcová

Asahi Group Holdings has provisionally picked up the Czech brewer as part of a package of Central European beer makers put up for sale by the multinational SABMillar. This also comprised breweries in Poland, Hungary, Romania, and Slovakia with the price tag for the job lot put at 7.3 billion euros (around 197 billion Czech crowns).

The sell-off was forced on SABMIllar by the European Commission as part of the price for its takeover by Anheuser-Busch InBev, which Brussels feared would create dominant positions and curb competition on a series of European markets while commanding around 27 percent of the world beer market. The Commission’s competition directorate still has to clear the Asahi purchase, though given the group’s fairly insignificant stakes on most of the problem markets this should not be a problem.

If the Japanese offer completes the course, then Asahi Group Holdings would, according to sources, appear to have comfortably outbid a rival offer for the brewery by the richest Czech, Petr Kellner, of the PPF group in partnership with the Czech-Slovak bank J&T.

Asahi earlier picked up some of SABMillar’s assets as part of the group divestment, for example, the Italian beer brand Peroni and Dutch brand Grolsh. This was already seen by analysts as a indication that Asahi was willing to spend freely and pick up European assets as part of its worldwide expansion.

In the past, Asahi was reported as one of the potential bidders for Prague’s Staropramen brewery, the second biggest in the country, when it was put up for sale in 2012. The eventual winner of that contest was Molson Coors. Staropramen though is licensed to Asahi dry to sell on European markets, it’s one of the Japanese brewery’s biggest and best selling brands.

Photo: CTK

Asahi is reckoned to have exhausted most of the beer market possibilities on its Japanese domestic market by the late 1990s. It has since expanded into drinks, snacks, and food in Japan, and has expanded abroad through an aggressive merger and acquisition policy. It began life in 1889 after borrowing largely from German beer know-how and technology.

Plzeňský Prazdroj’s profits for last year, ending in March, rose five percent to 3.7 billion crowns with turnover climbing slightly slower to around 14.4 billion crowns. SABMillar had pinpointed Plzeňský Prazdroj to become one of its major brands worldwide, though many analysts believed that all the promotion and marketing promises were only partially fulfilled.

The Plzeň brewer has been in Japanese hands before, though these are not likely to be happy memories. Plzeňský Prazdroj’s majority owner was at one stage in the hands of the investment group Nomura, though it always openly admitted that this was never a long-term strategic investment and that it would quit once the price for getting out was right. The latest transaction should be completed by December 2017.