World Beers: Taste of the Orient

World beers can be a very hard sell. Making a retailer want to sell a beer you are importing must be one of the tougher jobs in the drinks industry, because not only do you have to sell the product but also the country. Sure, this might be a very nice Estonian beer, they think, but why would any of my customers want to drink a beer from Estonia?

Asian beers are very much the exception to this. For whatever reason, beers from across the Asian continent have enjoyed immediate customer loyalty over the past 10 to 15 years. The success of a brand such as Tiger, which, for the past five years, has been as much a fixture in pubs' back-bar fridges as Budvar or Corona, is proof of this.

Beers from China, Japan, Singapore, India and Thailand have generated sustainable sales in the on-trade and importers are spending money both above and below the line: they are one of the major success stories in the world beer category.

One reason for this is they are all beers that have an in-built advantage over much of the competition. This is their image, as Roger Barrey of Interbev (importer of Chang Beer) explains. "To the consumer Asia means luxury, aspiration and experience. So Asian beers have a good natural selling point - they are seen as premium," he says.

Bedford brewer Wells & Young's (W&Y) brews several world beers, including Kirin. Managing director Nigel McNally admits that when taking Kirin to market W&Y starts off with an advantage.

"You start off having won half the battle if you say you have Japanese beer," he says. "People have an image of perfection when you talk about Japan - they look at the attention to detail and craft involved in Japanese cars and stereos. If you take that perception and apply it to beer you are on to something good. It's only your own fault if you mess that up."

But there is a slight sense that Asian beers are starting to face challenges in the marketplace. The reality is that while Asian beers are seen in some pubs, the sector is not their major breadwinner.

As has been mentioned earlier in this Focus, to be a successful world beer you have to have a ready-made market for the product. Over the past 20 years Asian beers have had two lucrative routes to market which have supported growth: supplying immigrant communities and the restaurant sector.

Pierhead Purchasing imports beers from around the world - many of which are Asian (such as Hue from Vietnam and Orion from Japan). The company's number one sellers in the Asian sector, according to managing director Michael Cook, are two Korean beers, Hite and Max Prime - not exactly big sellers in pubs.

"While they are genuinely imported, they are both quite cheap," he says. "But their popularity is down to the fact that there are quite large populations of Koreans in parts of the UK - such as New Malden, South West London. They are very loyal to their brands."

Most Asian beers have built growth on the back of the Asian restaurant sector - something Geoff Tirrell, managing director of Entbe, which imports Singha beer from Thailand, readily admits.

"Singha has always been a restaurant beer. Despite being in the market for 30 years now we are not in the mainstream," he says.

This set-up has served most Asian beers well in the past 15 years. However, the strategy is looking outdated and we appear to have reached a period of step-change. Asian food has never been as popular. But, with the possible exception of Japanese/sushi restaurants, the Asian restaurant market appears to have found its level, and an increasing number of brands are now fighting it out over the same piece of turf.

So the next big move for Asian beers is to sell themselves to pubs and bars simply as a beer to drink, rather than just an accompaniment to food. But this is no simple task, according to Geoff.

"Going to pubs as a straight bottled beer is still a hard sell," he says. "If we are not making that connection with food, it is tough and there is serious competition out there. The reduction in the number of new Thai restaurants has meant that we have had to look to expand our focus out of our regular market. So the pub sector is now our most important market."

Roger Barrey, who imports fellow Thai beer Chang into the UK, agrees but doesn't want licensees to stock the brand for the sake of it.

"The pub market is very important for Chang - but some strategic thinking is needed," he says. "I don't just want it stocked - I want it moving off the shelves. I'd love people to discover it and seek it out rather than have the brand thrust at them because it is not selling. Discovery of brands is what turns the consumer on."

So how can Asian beers make that next step into pubs - or perhaps more pertinently, how did Tiger do it? There are those in the industry who say it was a simple matter of the brand owner in Singapore being willing to pay pub companies big listings fees and placing it in premium outlets.

If that is the case, then not many other brands can win.

Perhaps in their search for an answer importers should look towards the work done by two regional brewers, Shepherd Neame and Wells & Young's, and their Japanese lager brands, Asahi and Kirin respectively. While they undoubtedly have an advantage thanks to guaranteed distribution through their pub estates, they perhaps point the way forward for Asian beers.

Their focus is on draught, giving licensees a better profit opportunity. And, rather than trading on pure provenance, they look at the idea of craft and quality - in much the same way as the companies do with their cask ale portfolios.

So what of the future for Asian beers? The increasingly well-worn argument in most industries is, "look out for what will happen in China", and beer is no exception. Michael Cook from Pierhead Purchasing certainly believes this. "I think we are going to have to think about the advent of more and more Chinese beers in the future," he says. "And I don't just mean more Chinese beers per se, but a closer interest and knowledge of more regional Chinese beers and foods."

Perhaps another factor in Asian beers' favour is the fact that they were not originally pub products. They started off in the restaurant and so bring a bit of the Continental-style drinking culture that the industry is seeking - as Graeme Craig from Shepherd Neame explains. "Asian beers move us slightly more towards café culture, without actually being café culture," he says. "Look at the high volume of Asian beers sold in half-pint glasses - it is not like that with other lagers or ales."