26. Regional review
In Central and Eastern Europe, brand portfolio
reviews have already begun to show good results
especially in Poland, Hungary and Romania.
In addition to Heineken, other brands in the. premium
and mainstream segments, such as Zywiec and
Specjal® in Poland and Soproni® in Hungary,
also performed strongly.
A special feature of this region is the strong growth
of beer in 'Top Star' PET bottles, which now
represents 30 percent or more of the market in
some countries. To capitalise on this trend, we are
rolling out our full range of products across the
countries in this form of packaging. Exploiting our
leading edge for innovation in draught beer systems,
we introduced the BeerTender in Austria in 2005
and are planning further launches in other markets.
On the distribution side, we carried out an extensive
study, benchmarking best practices across countries.
The results of these are now being implemented
on a larger scale.
On the cost side and in the context of the integration
of the former BBAG group, we achieved annualised
recurring savings of €55 million in 2005, up from
€26 million in 2004. This is fully in line with our
target to deliver €80 million synergies before taxation
by the end of 2007 in the former BBAG area.
In Russia we reached a milestone with the acquisition
of four brewers adding a total of six breweries to
our operations. These were Baikal Brewery (Irkutsk),
Stepan Razin Brewery (St. Petersburg), Patra Brewery
(Yekaterinburg) and Ivan Taranov (Kaliningrad,
Novotroitsk and Chabarovsk). Russia is now our
largest operation by volume, totalling 12 million
hectolitres, making us the third strongest player
in the market with a market share of 14 percent.
Our top priority for 2006 is the integration of the
existing operations and their further improvement.
The implementation of the brand portfolio review,
the focus on premium brands and the achievement
of the expected synergies in production and
distribution should allow us to extract additional
value both in Europe and in our Russian operations.
BeerTender in Austria
BeerTender was successfully launched
in Austria in October 2005 to a positive
consumer response.
Austrian consumers can now choose from
three premium brands: Heineken, Zipfer
Urtyp® and Gösser Marzen®. The 4-litre
kegs of these brands are available from
food retailers.
Heineken N.V. - Annual Report 2005