drinks bulletin Your source for industry updates

Reports have emerged of liquor licensing enforcement activity in Queensland, New South Wales and Victoria in the lead up to the busy summer trading period. In October, the licensee and bar attendant of a restaurant in Brisbane’s Fortitude Valley were found guilty of allowing liquor to be consumed by unduly intoxicated patrons, Queensland’s Office of Liquor, Gaming and Racing (OLGR) has revealed. “The staff had previously completed RSA courses and ...

Around 150 customers of Carlton & United Breweries celebrated the relaunch of Tooth’s Pale Ale at The Oaks Hotel in Sydney on Thursday night. The Tooth’s Pale Ale launch builds on the success of heritage brands such as Resch’s and Melbourne Bitter, CUB Head of Craft & Australian Premium Tim Ovadia told drinks bulletin this week. For the Pale Ale relaunch, the CUB team engaged a historian to research Tooth’s ...

Anheuser-Busch InBev and SABMiller have a largely complementary geographic footprint that once combined will create the first truly global beer company, AB InBev said this week. AB InBev and SABMiller on Wednesday announced they had reached agreement on the terms of their $US107 billion tie-up. At this stage the merged entity is dubbed Newco, a generic placeholder name commonly used for proposed merged companies to distinguish the combined entity with ...

A former executive of chemicals company Orica and Qantas Airways has been appointed Chief Financial Officer of Treasury Wine Estates. Current CFO Tony Reeves has decided to transition out of his role after several successful years with the company, TWE announced on Thursday. His last day will be January 31, 2016. Noel Meehan, who most recently was Orica CFO - a position he held for more than eight years - ...

Asset sales required of Anheuser-Busch InBev by competition authorities could easily make $US106 billion a “very tall price” for SABMiller, according to a merger expert. The deal may face few regulatory hurdles in Australia, but John Colley, Professor of Practice at UK’s Warwick Business School, this week reaffirmed that it is a different story in the US and other markets. AB InBev on Wednesday requested a further one-week extension from ...

Despite media reports to the contrary, Anheuser-Busch InBev’s takeover of SABMiller faces no major regulatory hurdles in the Australian market, according to a leading competition lawyer. McCullough Robertson partner John Kettle was responding to recent comments by former ACCC Chairman, Professor Allan Fels, that the transaction dubbed ‘Megabrew’ would not get an easy ride past the competition watchdog. “I actually think he’s the best competition economist in Australia, but I ...

Woolworths has reported a comparable sales decline in its Australian Food and Liquor sales, while the company is set to open its 200th Dan Murphy’s store on Friday. Food and Liquor sales were up 0.4 per cent to $11.1 billion for the quarter ended October 4. But the company said the division’s comparable sales had continued the decline foreshadowed at its full-year results announcement in August. “At the FY15 results announcement ...

The wine show system is benefiting from a new breed of judges who are awarding medals to a more diverse array of wines than ever before, according to McWilliam’s Chief Winemaker, Jim Chatto. Chatto was speaking following the launch of McWilliam’s new vintage Appellation and Flagship wines, which spearhead the brand’s renewed focus on New South Wales wine regions. He said medium-bodied styles of shiraz, such as those from NSW, ...

The transformation of Coles Liquor remains on track, Wesfarmers executives said on Thursday, while acknowledging the division had not achieved like-for-like sales growth. Coles’ headline food and liquor sales were $7.6 billion for the first quarter of FY16, up 4.7 per cent on the previous corresponding period, with comparable store sales up 3.6 per cent. Liquor’s underlying performance was “close to flat” on a like-for-like basis but still showed a significant ...

The China-Australia Free Trade Agreement (ChAFTA) will further boost Australian wine producers at a time when Chinese wine consumption is recovering from the impact of government austerity measures, Euromonitor has reaffirmed. In a white paper released this week, Euromonitor said 2014 had seen a recovery of the Chinese wine market, which returned to positive growth levels. “This was also reflected in Australian exports, where in 2014 total Australian wine exported ...