Anheuser-Busch said Tuesday it will build a $63 million greenfield brewery in Foshan to support the significant growth of Budweiser and Harbin brands throughout China.
Scheduled for completion in late 2008, the Foshan brewery will be built on a 249,000 square-meter site and will have a production capacity of 2.6 million hectoliters with potential for expansion, the company said.
Anheuser-Busch said it is doubling Budweiser’s distribution in China over the next five years by expanding to 100 new cities each with a population of at least 1 million people. These markets will make Budweiser available to an additional 150 million potential beer drinkers. Anheuser-Busch also plans to introduce Harbin to 33 new markets in 2007.
In 2006, China’s beer market grew nearly 15 percent, the third consecutive year of double-digit volume growth, the company said.
“As the largest-volume and fastest-growing beer market in the world, China remains one of our most important international priorities,” said August A. Busch IV, president and chief executive officer of Anheuser-Busch. “The Foshan brewery allows us to increase the availability of Budweiser and Harbin premium brands in China where the premium and super-premium beer categories are growing faster than the rest of the industry and have tremendous long-term potential.”