The world's number two brewer, SABMiller, has acquired another Polish brewery through its local subsidiary Kompania Piwowarska.
KP will take a 98.8 per cent stake in Browar Dojlidy, buying out previous shareholder Radeberger at a cost of €35.2 million. The company will also assume an outstanding loan from Radeberger paid to its erstwhile subsidiary.
The acquisition is conditional upon the satisfactory completion of a due diligence review by KP and the approval of the Polish Office for Protection of Competition and Consumers, and the Ministry of Interior.
Graham Mackay, chief executive of SABMiller said: "This acquisition, which further consolidates our operations in Poland, gives us the opportunity to grow Dojlidy's core brands across our existing distribution platform. It builds on our strategy of optimising and expanding our established positions in developing markets and we anticipate additional benefits, such as procurement and distribution synergies, from integrating the business into KP."
Dojlidy has one brewery, located in Bialystok in the north east of Poland, some 200 kilometres from Warsaw. The company currently has an annual capacity of some 900,000 hectolitres and annual sales of 734,000 hectolitres. Dojlidy will become KP's third brewery in Poland, joining its other breweries in Poznan and Tyskie.
Dojlidy's main brands are Zubr, Classic and Zlote, which have a strong presence in its home region. Dojlidy will give KP improved access to consumers in the north and east of Poland and will enhance KP's brand portfolio in the economy segment, SABMiller said.
SABMiller has inherited the growing Polish business first established by South African Breweries in the mid-1990s, a time when many of the world's leading brewers (notably Heineken and Carlsberg) began to recognise the potential of the Polish beer market.
SAB first entered Poland with the acquisition of a 27.5 per cent stake in the Lech brewery in 1996, and later that same year added a majority shareholding in the Tyskie brewery. SAB increased its shareholdings in both companies over the next few years, and merged the two companies in 1999 to form KP.
SABMiller currently has a 72 per cent stake in KP, which last year produced 7.6 million hl of beer, giving it around 31 per cent of the Polish market.