Efes Ukraine reviews its 2012 results: confident growth against the backdrop of a falling market

One of the country’s leading brewers, Efes Ukraine reviews its 2012 results. Last year the company completed its integration into Efes group, significantly increased the production capacity and continued confident growth against the backdrop of a falling market.

In 2012 the company’s sales volume grew by 14% on the year-on-year basis. The growth took place against a general negative trend dominating the Ukrainian beer market: last year the production of beer in Ukraine fell by 3.5%, from 29.79 mil hectolitres (hl) in 2011 down to 28.75 mil hl in 2012 (data by “Ukrpivo” industry association).

To meet a growing demand for the company’s products, in 2012 Efes Ukraine increased the production capacity of its brewery by 34%, up to 65 thousand hl per week. The overall investment into the production upgrade was over 10 mil Euros.

Also, in November 2012 the company officially changed its name from Miller Brands Ukraine to Efes Ukraine, thus completing the integration of Ukrainian subsidiary into Efes – one of the leading beer makers in Europe, an international business group comprising 18 breweries, 7 malteries and 20 Coca-Cola bottling plants in 16 countries.

“Facing tough competition and negative market trends in 2012 we managed not only to sustain, but to considerably grow our production volumes. The task was all the more complicated due to the big corporate changes that followed the change of the company’s ownership at the beginning of the year, – says Valentin Boinitsky, Corporate Affairs Director at Efes Ukraine. – The M&A process is a challenging period in the life of any company. I’m glad to note that we’ve successfully passed through it and kept up the positive business dynamics. The transition period is over, we continue to grow and develop our brand portfolio, and plan to present to our consumers some new and interesting products in 2013”.