http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/09/26/us-brewing-idUSTRE78P2TK20110926
this is a general comment and not directed at anyone
i wonder if being concerned with this subject is like being concerned with what your neighbor does in his private back yard; as long as it’s not potentially harmful to you maybe you don’t need to be concerned. or maybe not
apparently our neighbors drink a lot of swill.
They would have to get by the momopoly oversight in both the EU and the USA. It might happen, but they would have to sell off assets to get down to a level for approval.
I remember that there was a similar thing in the financial press about a year ago about Sierra Nevada being a prime take over candidate. The financial writers did not have a clue that it was a privately owned company. If Ken Grossman does not want to sell, it is not for sale. This might be another case of the cart before the horse.
If this happen then it will be one distributor per county.
GREAT!!!
Nice blog entry, Drew!
I was especially fond of your sugary statement about ABI’s R&D. ;D
Yeah, I can’t see this getting past regulators, especially in Europe.
I like to think that I have a way with words. All the grumbling I hear from folks is a strong worry about what it means for the research side of the world. It’s not much fun for the science types.
I’m more concerned with ABISABL whatever its going to be called going out and say…we’re buying all of the “put an ingredient name here” and just letting it rot. Screw all the craft brewers, drive their costs too high to be profitable…win.
Pretty interesting development, though probably not all that surprising.
In any case, it won’t have any affect on homebrewers, most of whom won’t (and shouldn’t) give a flip about it…
So as mildly interesting as these developments in the industry may be, it’s not the end of the world. As I suspect is the case with quite a few people in the forums, I rarely buy any commercial beer in general anyway (big brewer or small) since frankly, with very few exceptions I find most of those products lacking. They are a last resort .
The best thing for the better small brewers of the world though may just be that day when all the giants finally do merge (which is getting close, apparently).
Such a mega-giant corporate beer entity could be a boon to small breweries everywhere by serving as an impetus for some of the average BMC drinkers to re-think their allegiances and perhaps decide to stick it to the big foreign corporate owners by trying something new, something made in the states with pride …something even made locally.
Then again, the American culture at large has in the last 30-40 years certainly not been known for choosing quality over a cheap deal on foreign goods.
After all, Sam Walton built an empire on that sad fact.
:o
That is called being anti-competitive and there are laws against it.
Yup. Thank God for small mercies eh.
I just had a look at market share data from Euromonitor (I have access to their database through work). The proposed conglomerate would have 67% market share in the US (ABI 50.2, Miller 16.9), with MolsonCoors being next largest at 13%.
Yes, but there are so many ways to get around that. And even if they don’t buy all of a supply, buy a huge portion again drive the prices through the roof. Its happened with computer components, there have been spices in memory prices because X company purchased most of what was available because they “needed it” for something they were working on.
I remember when they had the “made in the USA” banners. Then Sam Walton died and it became “Low Prices Everday”.
Above, I see that my spelling is teh pits. ;D
Doesn’t seem to have improved down here, either! 
It is possible that a merger this size could have an effect on the commodities markets we buy our ingredients through. Probably not at this point but it could happen down the road if the big boys move all their grain and hop production in-house. It might not be worth the farmers time to supply the craft market.
I agree with most people on here that this size merger would have a hard time getting approval in Europe. Here in the US it will just take a few more contributions to the correct campaigns but that another matter.
Paul