San Miguel eyes Eastern Europe beer markets

Southeast Asia's largest publicly-listed food, beverage and packaging group, plans to add Eastern Europe and Laos to its beer export markets.

San Miguel Corporation said the company would look into exporting beer in eastern Europe over the next five years and in Laos by 2009 plus increase beer shipments to the United States.

"We are already exporting to the US but only very little because it's hard to export there since they have a multi-layered distribution system. Everything is in the exploratory stage," an SMC official said.

The food and beer conglomerate last week said it was looking to expand its beer operations in Vietnam and studying the feasibility of putting up a brewery in Cambodia.

"The company confirms that it intends to expand its presence in the Vietnam market and that it is studying the feasibility of putting up a brewery in Cambodia," San Miguel later said in a statement to the stock exchange.

San Miguel operates one brewery each in Indonesia, Australia, Vietnam and Thailand, and three in China, including the one in Hong Kong.

The company earlier disclosed plans to spin off its domestic beer business under San Miguel Brewery Inc. in an initial public offering, possibly before the year ends.

San Miguel, which is 20 percent owned by Kirin Holdings of Japan, also plans to venture into other businesses, such as power generation and transmission, water and other utilities, mining and infrastructure.

San Miguel reported that net income nearly doubled in the first half of the year to P7.88 billion on higher sales of beer and food businesses.

Volume and revenues of San Miguel's domestic beer operations rose three percent and six percent due to election-related spending.

San Miguel Brewing International Ltd., meanwhile, ended the first semester with encouraging results, with the second quarter's operating income significantly narrowing the first quarter's loss due to considerable gains in North China, Australia and export operations.