The largest beer manufacturer of India, United Breweries Ltd.,wants to grab 5 % of premium mild beer segment by next year with the launch of global super premium brand Heineken

UBL General Manager (Marketing) Sanjoy Roy during lauch of Heineken in the city on Monday said, “We want to achieve 5% of mild beer market by next year with the launch of the Amsterdam based global super premium mild beer in Kolkata.”

“We have already launched the brand in Mumbai, Delhi, Chennai, Hyderabad, Chandigarh and few other cities, but till date we were selling imported beer from other countries. Now we are manufacturing it in India at UBL’s Bombay Breweries, Taloja,” he said.

He said that import of this brand put extra burden on customers, but as “we are manufacturing at our own breweries, now the price is very competitive against other brands.”

UBL has some major premium beer brands like Kingfisher Ultra, Kingfisher Premium, Foster, Tuborg, Carlsberg.

Out of the total beer market, mild beer has 20 % market share.

Roy added that this year “we expected to sell 2 lakh mild beer bottles and till November we achieved 60% of target.”

“In the next year we target to sell around 5 lakh mild beer bottle,” he said.

Heineken has 37.7% share in UBL in India.

Roy said if the state government increases service tax in future, the price of beer and other alcoholic drinks will also increase.