Malt production and market
The malt market has seen fundamental changes which was a joint action of many factors first leading to its growth and then to its abrupt collapse. The main tendency of 2008 was development of brewing companies’ own raw materials base and reduction in volumes of malt being sold and bought. In 2009 there were structural changes i.e. the list of the main suppliers became longer and they got more customers.
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Promotion actions of brewing companies
In the conditions of market shrinking the brewing companies opted for quite a straightforward consumer enticing i.e. promotion actions. The producers often propose the customers to capitalize their loyalty to beer brands. However what benefit can a promotion campaign give and how do we organize the right promotion? Last year agency Bojole research started a comprehensive research of brewers’ promotional activity. The results showed that the budget of the promotional action plays an important but the decisive role for sales growth. Research director Bojole research Olga Makarova has analyzed the effectiveness of promotion actions carried out by brewers in 2009, and has given several recommendations on promotion action planning.
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Companies and brands positions
The big brewing companies had to restructure their marketing strategies answering to market demands. It is interesting to compare the changes in companies’ market positions to their branding activity.
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Russia. The Catalogue of Brewing Industry Enterprises

473 Beer producers
The characteristics of the regions

Central Region  (with Google translator)
Northwest Region  (with Google translator)
Southern Region  (with Google translator)
Volga Region  (with Google translator)
Ural Region  (with Google translator)
Siberia Region  (with Google translator)
Far East Region   (with Google translator)

Small brewing scale
Mini-breweries account for about 0.8% of Russian beer production, restaurant breweries – for about 0.2%. Do we really have to consider such a small market segment? Yes we do, since the customers are gaining distinct interest for natural, draught and original. In case minibreweries focus on these qualities of the production and encourage beer patriotism. they will be able to compete with the federal companies. Certainly only provided the latter do not do the same thing.
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The leading producers of the mini breweries (read with Google translator)

Vasileostrovskaya brewery (read with Google translator)

Admiral Kolchak  (read with Google translator)

Announcement

Russia: results of 2008, trends of 2009
The brewing industry and market continue growing, in spite of the consumption decline. During the first half year the market has grown by 8-10% in monetary terms and can reach the level of 500,000 mln. ruble by the end of the year. The ruble stabilization and malt price fall are to positively effect the companies’ profitability. Besides, the market leaders worked hard at costs cutting, developing the resource base and optimizing production and logistics. Since the year start, Efes and «Baltika» have been showing the best dynamics. But unlike the past years, only regional breweries can boast of beer output growth.
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Ukraine: market structure
Early in 2008 there were expectations of beer market moderate growth while its development tendencies were quite positive but the year ended with decline and instability. The turning period for the whole Ukrainian economy “October-November” 2008 has changed the trends which had existed previously. We analyzed all the aspects of market development and companies’ competitive positions before and after the economy crisis onset. 
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Belarus: investments into the perspective
In spite of the serious setback of production, a row of companies managed to succeed at the Belarus market. Notwithstanding the import growth resumption, alteration of consumer’s preference and state regulation still allow the national producers to develop. Besides a host of investment projects, targeted at production expansion, design improvement and distribution chain development have been completed or are being carried out by Belarus brewers.
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Kazakhstan: industry and market economy
Since the beginning of 2008 the brewing industry has been exhibiting a fluctuating growth dynamics though in other countries of Eastern Europe beer production was still growing slowly. The protracted production setback and transition from beer market stagnation to recession were caused by government regulation, economy crisis and poor weather.
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Russia: malt production and market
For the first time in many years malt production is falling in Russia. The resource base has been dynamically developing since the middle of the 90-ies. But the malt deficit was satisfies only by the end of 2007, when malt production grew by 26%. This year can also be considered the most successful one both for breweries and malt producers by volume market growth volume. May 2008 was the turning point, as it became obvious that the current resource supply is more than enough to satisfy the demand. There began the first decline in malt production.
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Ukraine beer market 2008
Within the past five years Ukraine beer market has been exhibiting quite a robust development dynamics. Its annual growth rate left behind not only the saturated market of developed countries but also exceeded the largest in the Eastern region Russian market. However in 2008 the dynamics which had been considered predictable changed.
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The favorite brands of young Russians
In spring 2009 company Profi Online Research found out about the favorite brands of young Russians among those presented on the beer market. In the research the emphasis was made on the consumption assessment, loyalty, and brand awareness. The article includes previously published results of the research and some details of young audience preferences. Victoria Sokolova, research director of Profi Online Research speakes in more details about young Russians preferences in the context of beer market price segmentation and main factor effecting the brand choice.
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Lean production
Costs cut programs have become more actual in the times of economic instability. While in the past high profitability of breweries was driven by fast market growth, now good financial performance can be achieved only with expenditure reduction. However the brewers say that the projects on operational costs optimization has been launched long ago and various market development schemes are taken into account in companies’ plans.
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Production and market of beer in Russia 2008
The situation in the industry and beer market has been unstable for three years already. After a dynamic growth in 2006-2007 years, the year 2008 brought about stagnation for beer consumption and production in Russia. The previous year was a succession of problems. In particular the leap of producers’ sales prices (who had several objective reasons), poor weather and the economic crisis stood in the way of gradual leveling of market development rates.
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Kyrgyzstan: perspectives of the branch and market
Beer production and market in Kyrgyzstan Republic is forming and has a big development potential. This is confirmed by comparatively low consumption per capita and substantial share of inexpensive beer in the overall sales volumes. Currently Kyrgyzstan market is dominated by Russian and Kazakh companies, and in the past year import supply growth amounted to 26% in money terms. However the local brewers manage to modernize production, develop profitable market segments and prepare for expansion into the perspective regions of the country.
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Moscow Brewing Company: plant for distributor
Detroit Investment fund has always been successful, both at beer market operation and in investment projects realization. “PIT”, “Syabar” and “Vladpivo” all these companies were quite fortunate and were bought by world’s beer giants on the tide of market share growth. The new DI project is targeted at balancing import business, particularly in the conditions of economic crisis and ruble devaluation. “Moscow Brewing Company is a strategic project and built the plant not to sell later” - says Yevgeniy Kashper, co-owner of DI. He is sure that the Russian consumer can change her attitude to mass-market products, willing to pay a fair price for them, not including the promotion costs. Nowadays beer brands must be promoted not by advertising but by a balanced trade system and value for money products.
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Ukrainian premium
Roman Stepanovskiy, brand manager of “Obolon” entertains a possibility of changes in Ukrainian market price segmentation. The crisis will make the price factor more important, which can lead to growing of mainstream segment at the account of premium segment. However moving of expensive brands to a cheaper segment is unlikely. “Obolon” carries on developing the existing premium brands i.e. youth’s beer “hike” and business beer Magnat, but at the same time it has launched its anicrisis brand Zibert.
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