Chinese Brand Snow Beer to Beat Out #1 Beer Bud Light

The Wall Street Journal has reported that Snow Beer, a Chinese brand of beer marketed by a joint venture between SABMiller plc and China Resources Enterprise Ltd., either has or soon will become the best-selling beer in the world. Beating out the raining champ for years, Bud Light!

Here is the article from the Wall Street Journal:

SANHE, China — Without leaving home, an obscure Chinese beer is challenging Bud Light’s position as the world’s top-selling brand of suds.

Market watchers say Snow Beer, the product of a joint venture between London-based SABMiller PLC and China Resources Enterprise Ltd., will overtake or has already overtaken Anheuser-Busch Co.’s Bud Light in terms of consumption, depending on how the numbers are crunched.
[Snow Beer for sale at a supermarket in Nanjing, east Chinas Jiangsu province 5 August 2007.]
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Snow Beer for sale at a supermarket in Nanjing, east Chinas Jiangsu province 5 August 2007.

“I can confirm that the Chinese brand Snow is now the largest beer brand in the world,” says Kevin Baker, account director for alcoholic beverages at the U.K.-based market-research firm Canadean Ltd. About 51.2 million hectoliters, or about 1.35 billion gallons, of Snow were consumed last year, compared with 48.4 million for Bud Light as a stand-alone brand, the firm says.

Another research firm in the U.K., Plato Logic, says Bud Light remained the top brand in 2007, with 51.8 million hectoliters consumed to Snow’s 51.2 million. But that slim lead faces a challenge: China Resources said last week that the Snow brand’s sales volume jumped 22% in the first half of this year compared with a year earlier, putting it on pace to unseat Bud Light, which is consumed mostly in the slower-growing U.S. market.

“I think it’s inevitable in certain respects that Snow will become the largest beer brand in the world,” says Paul Curran, an alcoholic-drink analyst at another research firm, Euromonitor International.

St. Louis-based Anheuser, soon to be acquired by InBev NV, of Belgium, isn’t giving up Bud Light’s crown easily. A spokesman said Bud Light remains the top brand when sales of its Budweiser brand are included. Plato Logic, which, like other research firms and analysts, considers the two brands separate, says 44.2 million hectoliters of Budweiser were consumed last year, down 2.2% from 2006.