Outgoing Zywiec president speaks about concerns over EB beer brand

Outgoing president of Zywiec, Alle Ypma, has been speaking about his three years at the helm of Poland's leading brewing group. In an interview with Puls Biznesu, Ypma described his biggest success to be the creation of an integrated group of breweries. "We managed to differentiate our portfolio of brands, build a distribution, sales and marketing network, and introduce an information system for management," he said. On the negative side, he admitted that one of the biggest problems facing Nico Nusmeier, the new chairman of the Heineken-controlled brewing giant, would be the declining popularity of the EB brand. Despite massive expenditure on advertising and promotion, EB saw its market share shrink from around 7% in 1999, to 2.7% in July 2001. "What is important for the company is that the results of the whole group are not dependent on the success or failure of that or another brand," said Ypma. (Puls Biznesu, p. 9) P.W.