CEO of Budweiser Brewing Group APAC, the largest beer company in the Asia-Pacific region, has affirmed its commitment to China market and will continue to invest there focusing on premiumisation, commercial expansion and digitization strategies.
Jan Craps said, “China is an important strategic market for Budweiser APAC. Last year, the firm’s China sales jumped 9.3% from the previous year and its revenue soared 7.9%. And it logged double-digit growth in China’s ultra-premium beer market.”
Budweiser started to focus on the premium beer segment more than a decade ago and it is now the leader in this segment in both China and Asia region. Craps said, “We partner very closely with our wholesale partners. They are very strong at building brands in this industry. We also have a team who are very passionate about innovation and high-quality products. They help us to get established in the market. So we are very optimistic about the future growth of the premium segment in China.”
Budweiser will also invest further in ESG as it boasted of its Wuhan Brewery being the world’s first carbon neutral brewery. Its Jinzhou brewery will also become carbon-neutral by the end of this year. To achieve this, Budweiser has to make that extra investments to convert its boilers into biomass boilers. It also upgraded all its vehicles to electric autos, and purchased renewable electricity as part of its mission of becoming carbon-neutral.
In the agricultural front, Budweiser has also contributed by working with local barley farmers from Jiangsu province to support them with sustainable agricultural techniques and then commit to purchasing their barley commodity. In 2021, Budweiser bought 30,000 tons of barley from more than 4,000 farmers.
During the pandemic in 2020, the lychee farmers in Fujian faced tremendous obstacles, and Budweiser team in Fujian launched a new lychee-flavored beer to support these farmers.
