ECONOMYNEXT – Sri Lanka’s Lion Brewery (Ceylon) Plc is planning to boost exports with the help of a newly set up plant, where new beers will be developed and tested, targeting foreign markets, Chief Executive Rajiv Meewakkala said.
Lion Brewery already exports about 20 million dollars of beer to the Maldives, where it is the market leader, the Middle East and East Africa.
In the Maldives Lion Brewery also has rights to export Carlsberg which it produces under license in addition to its own brand.
Over the next five years the firm expects to boost exports to 35 million dollars or 20 percent of its output.
The domestic market had been hit by currency collapses and tax hikes and is usually grows only 2 to 3 percent a year.
Exports has grown 12 to 13 percent a year, Meewakkala said.
Lion Brewery has a plant with an annual capacity of 200 million litres, of which only 160 million is utilized at the moment leaving spare capacity. About 15 percent of the product is already exported.
A single production run at the big plant is about 168,000 litres making it difficult to experiment and fine tune products without massive wastage.
Lion Brewery has built a small hi-tech facility or ‘innovation centre’ which can brew as little as 2,000 litres at a time, allowing beers to be designed a fine tuned.
“This facility will help support in driving Sri Lanka’s non-traditional exports,” Meewakkala said.
The plant cost 4 billion rupees to build.
Several new beers, some with branding closely associated with Sri Lanka and using flavours from mango to coffee, have been already developed in the facility and is being marketed to tourists and other customers.
These include Elle Valley White, a wheat beer, Thambapanni Red Ale, Ambalavi Mango, Cucumber Lime, Fest Celebration Lager, Blonde, a Belgian style beer, Pure Ceylon Tea Beer and Coffee Stout.
The firm already has about 90 percent of the domestic market which is only growing 2 to 3 percent with currency collapses and tax hikes also making products less affordable.
Lion Brewery is facing competition from Distilleries Corporation of Sri Lanka, the island’s biggest hard alcohol firm, which acquired a brewery.
Mewakkala says his firm welcomes competition. (Colombo/Dec03/2024)
