* To build 2-3 breweries in Africa
* Sees Africa beer consumption reaching 30 litres
By Tiisetso Motsoeneng and Tebogo Mahlaela
LONDON, April 16 (Reuters) – SABMiller plans to invest up to
$2.5 billion in Africa over the next five years to build and
revamp breweries, its head for the region said on Monday, as it
looks to slake rising demand for beer in the fast-growing
continent.
“We are still looking at around 400 to 500 million dollars a
year … for the next three to five years,” Mark Bowman,
SABMiller’s managing director for Africa told the Reuters Africa
Investment Summit.
“There’s quite an attractive growth in markets outside South
Africa so we will be investing basically to meet and be ahead of
demand,” he said in an interview at Reuters offices in
Johannesburg.
SABMiller’s Africa business, which excludes South Africa, is
the group’s biggest recipient of capital expenditure and its
fastest growing, with underlying volumes in the last three
months of 2011 up 11 percent.
Bowman said the London-based brewer, which is also listed in
Johannesburg, will use the money to build two to three breweries
each year across the continent, where some breweries are running
at or near full capacity.
Africa is home to a billion people and, after a decade of
relative political stability, dozens of fast-growing economies.
Although still poor, it is increasingly seen as the next big
growth market for consumer goods.
Continued…
