A fall in demand for premium beers in the UK and the rest of Europe saw the maker of Stella Artois and Beck's post a fall in sales today.
The US-Belgian group Anheuser-Busch InBev, the world's biggest brewer, said that sales had fallen 1.1% in the second quarter of the year, in spite of the launch of Stella Artois 4% – a weaker version of the famously strong lager aimed at consumers downgrading from premium to standard brands.
But the company was keen to emphasise that it had managed to increase its share of the market, even though the industry was being battered by the recession, "as a result of the resurgence of Stella Artois following the launch of Stella Artois 4%," according to Stuart MacFarlane, the president of InBev UK.
MacFarlane added that sales of the group's German pilsener Beck's in pubs had enjoyed their best period of sustained growth in three years.
However, total beer sales in the UK fell 4.8% and beer sales in pubs were down 4.5% in the three months to June, according to a British Beer and Pub Association estimate.
The company recorded profits of $1.1bn (£660m), a rise of 13% compared with the same period a year earlier, helped by the sale of stakes in brewing companies. However, it cautioned that the recession was flattening beer consumption worldwide.
The company said that the rise in profits was the result of its drive to raise at least $7bn from selloffs this year, make $1bn in savings from merging the former InBev and Anheuser-Busch operations, and shave $1bn off total costs and another $500m from US operations.
The launch of Stella Artois 4% was intended to boost the brand's offering in the standard beer market, as opposed to Stella's traditional positioning in the "premium" market – classified as beers with an alcohol content of 5% or more. A spokeswoman said that the combination of the Stella brand and the move to the standard market had helped build market share.
Last year, the company reported a further decline in sales of Stella Artois, Beck's and its other beers in western Europe. Globally, it has also seen volumes decrease. Sales fell in North America, parts of Latin America and western Europe, where AB InBev is pushing its own brands and subcontracting less. Demand fell even more sharply in central and eastern Europe, where sales dropped as much as 8.9%.
Carlos Brito, the company's chief executive, said: "The beer industry, while resilient in most of our key markets, is not immune to economic pressures."
For the first half of 2009, AB InBev recorded a net profit of $1.92bn, up from $1.25bn in the same period in 2008.
AB InBev is the result of the merger late last year of Anheuser-Busch, based in St Louis in the US, and InBev of Belgium. The company's asset-selling strategy is in part intended to help pay off the loans that funded the $52bn merger.
