The new owner of Slovenia's two largest breweries is Dutch brewing giant Heineken. Foto: BoBo
The new owner of Slovenia's two largest breweries is Dutch brewing giant Heineken. Foto: BoBo
Heineken
Heineken, the third-largest brewery in the world, owns around 190 companies in over 70 countries. The group employs more than 85,000 people. In February, Heineken released its results for 2014: revenue totalled 21.2 billion euros, whereas profit stood at 1.52 billion (up 11 percent over the year before). Foto: BoBo

Five bidders were vying for the 51.11 percent stake in Pivovarna Laško. The other companies or funds that submitted binding offers were Kohlberg Kravis Roberts (KKR), Bain Capital, Mid Europa Partners and CVC Capital Partners.

"Heineken will definitely consolidate production processes. Union and Laško are, technologically speaking, very advanced companies – if we ignore the financial meltdown of their owner. Many a company owned by Heineken is less advanced than Pivovarna Laško or Union. It is idle to speculate what could happen, but both Union and Laško are such big brands in Slovenia that simply I cannot imagine Heineken ditching either of them," agricultural economist Aleš Kuhar told MMC a few days ago. He stressed that Union and Laško had the same owner but were separate entities.

He believes that the breweries will probably sell their non-alcoholic beverage brands: "Or maybe they will concentrate the production of beverages. From a financial optimization perspective, production could be concentrated in Laško. It remains a question whether it makes sense to continue production in downtown Ljubljana. Production will probably increase where conditions are more favourable – which would be Laško in this particular case," Kuhar said, adding that Heineken would probably step up production after the takeover. He believes that the production capacities of both breweries have not yet been maxed out, which is true of most of Slovenia's food industry.

World's third-largest brewer
For the past 20 years, Heineken has been buying up breweries in Central, Eastern and South-Eastern Europe. Its portfolio now includes Karlovačka pivovara from Croatia, Pivara Skopje from Macedonia, Pivara MB from Serbia, Austria's largest brewery group Brau Union, Krušovice and Drinks Union from the Czech Republic, as well as Polish brewery Żywiec.

According to Heineken, both Laško and Union are brands that offer an array of opportunities. The company moreover believes that the quality of the breweries in Laško and Ljubljana is very high, which means that they could also produce other Heineken products.

G. C. , L. D. ; translated by D. V.