Germans opt to share beer treasure
YOU KNOW economic times are bad when a foreign brewer looks to the English market to bolster dwindling consumption at home.
That's exactly what Germany's Krombacher brewery is doing as it struggles for returns in a market where the average volume of beer each formerly-thirsty German drinks a year has fallen steadily from 145.9 litres in 1980 to 109.5 litres in 2008, according to Nielsen.
The move means greater availability of another product in a foreign or speciality beer sector that is stealing share from standard lager in the UK.
British licensees can expect WaverleyTBS to be pushing Krombacher hard due to the nature of the distribution agreement it has secured with the brand's importer, United Drinks. Apart from Manchester's Morgenrot Group, a speciality beer wholesaler distributing it in its local area, Waverley is the only route to market for Krombacher.
This sets the brand apart from other German lagers in Waverley's portfolio.
Brands such as Bitburger, Veltins, and Warsteiner can also be purchased from lots of other areas of the market. Waverley believes this means it can give customers buying Krombacher a valuable point of difference.
The deal is consistent with a sea change in the Germans' attitude to exporting their prized pilsners and wheat beers, with Krombacher and its competitors becoming interested in foreign markets after being resistant to the idea of export for years.
"German brewers have been a little bit slow to export," says Krombacher international sales manager Dagmar Broska, joking that her countryfolk are particularly patriotic about two of their products - beer and cars - and like to keep both in Germany for themselves. Now, she adds, they are all realising the value of expanding internationally.
However, Krombacher, Germany's biggest brewer since 2002, is targeting England in a dramatically different way from its competitors. Firstly, it has applied its principle of working with limited numbers of independent partners in each country to which it exports.
There is a possibility that Waverley will soon become the sole source of Krombacher in the UK.
Secondly, it is making a big play of its German provenance - taking genuine importation to an Nth degree.
Most of its competitors' beers are shipped in tankers and contract kegged by English brewers - Warsteiner by Thwaites, for example. However, Krombacher's main pilsner brand and its wheat beer are shipped to our shores already in kegs.
Krombacher and Waverley claim the genuine import proposition is highly valued by premium beer drinkers in the pub.
Only two per cent of the Krombacher brewery's volume is currently exported, but this is set to grow. Carlsberg's ads once claimed that its beer was "so good, the Danes hate to see it leave" and the same is likely to apply to patriotic German lager drinkers. Their loss could be our gain.
