Miller Brands, the UK arm of brewer SABMiller, increased its full-year revenues ahead of volumes that grew 4% in the 12 months to 31 March, as it focused on growing rate of sale and maintaining premium price points, managing director Gary Haigh has told M&C Report.
He also revealed that the company’s brands are available in c35,000 on-trade outlets in bottled form but around 8,000 on draught because draught distribution is closely controlled.
Volume growth was led by Pilsner Urquell (+10%). Haigh said Peroni volumes were up by “mid-single digits”. “We are very pleased with that. The majority of it comes from growing like-for-like sales.”
He said the plan for the coming year was “measured expansion with strong investment in like-for-like sales growth”.
“We are not making any mad dash for expansion. We’ve added 5-600 per year over the last four to five years. We are very thoughtful as to where we expand the brand.
“I think the beer industry is littered with ‘boom splat’ brands that have massive expansion in the on-trade and huge availability in the off-trade that drives huge pick up, but it quickly turns to discounting - two years later the brand is in rapid decline and taken off the market. That’s something we are desperately keen to avoid.”
Haigh added; “We’ve had good revenue growth, ahead of the volume growth. That tells the story that we’re able to hold pricing in the market.”
He added: “I think we are seeing consumers become more discerning about genuine imports.”
Miller Brands pointed out that the UK volume growth of 4% compares to a decline of 5.1% in the UK beer market overall across the 12 months.
