Austrian Brau Union seeks 10% of market and third place in the sector

Austrian brewery Brau Union (BU) intends to control 10% of the beer market in Poland within two years, creating a group of breweries consisting of Bydgoszcz's Kujawiak, Rzeszow's Van Pur, and the capital's Browary Warszawskie. Brau Union Polska board of directors president Werner Jansel hopes the integration of the breweries will be completed before year's end. He emphasizes that BU will use the experience of its Polish breweries, and thus it has included the presidents of those companies as members of BU's board. He also stressed that BU's ambition is to become the third-largest beer producer in Poland, and in order to do that it will have to surpass last year's sales of 1.6 million hectoliters by 1 million hectoliters. In first four months of this year, BU distributed 430,000 hectoliters of beer on the Polish market, which is 7% less than in the same period last year, but Jansel believes the group will compensate for those losses. Additionally, BU may soon enlarge the group by acquiring another brewery. The Austrian group has thus far invested euro 85 million in Poland and plans to invest zl.48 million this year to build new production facilities and to improve the quality of its products. (Puls Biznesu, p.12) A.D.