The head of Heineken has played down recent claims made by his counterpart at Diageo that the beer category is being impacted negatively by the growth of spirits.
Speaking to CNBC following the announcement of a 24.3% year-on-year hike in first-half sales, CEO Dolf van den Brink was asked about Ivan Menezes’ suggestion, made to the same channel late last month, that the consumer shift towards spirits was coming from beer and wine drinkers. Van den Brink admitted this is the case in isolated instances, but not in a broader sense.
“No, we don’t see that,” van den Brink told CNBC’s ‘Squawk Box Europe’ programme. “We see it sometimes market by market – the US follows that pattern.
“Globally, we don’t see that and we don’t believe that to be true. We see very strong growth across all our key markets in the Asia-Pacific region, in the Africa region, South America and also here in Europe, we’re seeing very healthy growth trends, also driven by people really going out again – our on-trade volumes in Europe, for example, were 70% up.
“People want to go out, people want to enjoy having a beer again and tourism is picking up. We remain very optimistic about the prospects for the beer category.”
In late July, Diageo reported a 21.4% increase in sales from its fiscal-2022, to the end of June. Also last month, Heineken extended its Dos Equis Mexican beer brand into spirits-based RTDs in the US.
To view van den Brink’s full interview with Squawk Box Europe, click here.
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