Millennium Alcobev's 6-month sales up 50%

Driven by huge gains in the southern markets, Millennium Alcobev (MAB), the third largest beer company in the country, has recorded a 50 per cent rise in sales volume in the first six months of 2004 compared with the industry growth 12 per cent.

"We have achieved significant breakthroughs in Tamil Nadu and Kerala, where the company currently has a 23 per cent and 18 per cent market share respectively," said Ravi Jain, managing director, Millenium Alcobev.

The company is planning to invest more than Rs 100 crore in setting two greenfield breweries in Rajasthan and Orissa, and upgrading its existing plants in two years. Millennium's nationwide market share has gone up to 11 per cent from 8 per cent last year.

Market leader UB has a 34 per cent share followed by Shaw Wallace with 32 per cent. Millennium sells brands such as Sandpiper and Zingaro across the country and also has regional brands such as kalyani Black Label Strong, Bullet and Marco Polo.

The company claims that it has immensely benefited from the takeover of retail liquor trade by the Tamil Nadu government, which has effectively broken down cartels to bring out a level-playing field.

"With private players in the retail trade, the top two companies could effectively put other challengers out of the business by offering lucrative schemes. But now, with the government in control, all brands have an equal opportunity," explained Jain.

He claimed that beer sales during the peak summer months between April and June 2004 grew by 1.3 million cases compared to the corresponding period last year. "Of that MAB alone has cornered nearly 900,000 incremental cases," he said.

The company is expecting to sell in excess of 12 million cases in 2004-05 with a sales of Rs 225 crore compared to 7.5 million last year.

Millennium owns three breweries in the country and has access to three other UB plants as the company is a joint venture between the UB Group, Scottish and Newcastle of UK and Ravi Jain.

Also, it has contract manufacturing tie-ups with five other breweries giving it a total capacity of 13.5 million cases in the 72 million cases in the domestic beer market.