Asahi Super Dry is one in all the principal beverage brands of Asahi Group Holding.
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Japan’s Asahi Group Holdings plans to return to the Chinese market to revive investment in the world’s largest beer market.
“We have been fighting hard because the first half of the Nineties. We made a really large investment in China, but we had to drag out of it a couple of years ago,” its CEO Atsushi Katsuki told CNBC’s Martin Soong.
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“But we’re finally capable of develop the proper strategy for the Chinese market.”
The company pulled out of China years ago resulting from the shortage of “premium products” and “very low” prices on the time, Katsuki said.
In 2017, Asahi announced that he would achieve this to sell almost 20% of shares in the Chinese brewery Tsingtao to Fosun Group and its subsidiaries.
“But with the entry of international brands in addition to craft beer, the premium segment in China is actually growing and expanding significantly.”
“Asahi Super Dry already has the largest sales in the Chinese market and is growing in double digits every yr, so we would like to proceed to essentially invest in this premium market,” he added.
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Katsuki said that while sales in China are the very best of all other markets, the US beer market is “by far the very best market in the world”.
“The ideas we will really extract from the U.S. market, coupled with the opportunities we will offer from our R&D side, could possibly be very conducive to the well-being of our consumers,” he told CNBC.
Asahi Super Dry and Italian Peroni Beer are a few of the company’s major beverage brands.
High inflation in Europe continues to be a cause for concern
Asahi has 19 production facilities across Europe and has been hit by rising inflation in the region.
High energy prices drive up the fee of Asahi glass bottles, as glass production requires numerous energy.
“So the indisputable fact that energy prices are going up could really have an effect on glasses, and we expect conversion costs could proceed to go up,” Katsuki said.
The Asahi group saw it revenue increased by 7.9% year-on-year in the primary quarter of the yr, with real currency revenues up 12% year-on-year.
“While there’s much uncertainty in the operating environment, especially about what global inflation might appear to be, we’re confident in the resilience and growth potential of our businesses,” Katsuki said in an earnings announcement in May.
Asahi Group Holdings shares are up greater than 29% because the starting of the yr.