Publication Date : 01-03-2013
With or without a product price increase, Carlsberg Brewery Malaysia Bhd intends to outpace the growth of the local beer industry this year by focusing on improving efficiency and leveraging on its product portfolio.
Managing director Soren Ravn said the beer maker would only be “looking at” prices in the next couple of months amid a trend of increasing raw materials and a competitive environment, and had not decided on anything just yet.
The last time it increased its product prices was in May last year by an average of 3 per cent.
“But with or without a price increase, we want to grow our volume faster than the market, our revenue faster than volume and our profit faster than revenue,” he told Starbiz in an interview.
“Basically, we need to take a 2 per cent, 3 per cent volume growth and turn it into a 6 per cent, 7 per cent revenue growth and a double-digit profit growth, that's our ambition,” Ravn said.
This will be achieved largely by growing its premium beers segment, which commands higher profit margins, and improving its efficiency processes across segments, including cutting wastage in raw material usage and of working hours, he added.
“We are also running a marketing effectiveness programme, which will look at the returns of our marketing investments. It's something we have to do, with all the brands that we have, we need to make sure that we have scale,” he said. Having said this, Ravn noted that a price increase would indeed be “justifiable”, given the existence of inflation here, with the latest headline inflation reportedly being at 1.3 per cent.
He is expecting “some” growth in the overall beer market this year, where growth would be in single digits, tracking the growth in the past few years.
Carlsberg has entered into a three-year partnership with the Premier League as the official beer partner of the Barclays Premier League.
The partnership starts off with the 2013/2014 season, beginning in August. The company naturally, is expecting sales to be boosted by this.
For the full financial year ended Dec 31, 2012, Carlsberg made a net profit of 191.6 million ringgit (US$61.9 million), 15.3 per cent higher than the 166.1 million ringgit posted in the same corresponding period last year. Its revenue for the full year stood at 1.58 billion ringgit against 1.48 billion ringgit a year ago.
The group's premium brands portfolio includes Asahi Super Dry, Kronenbourg and Somersby Apple Cider.
*US$1=3.09 ringgit
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