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

Jaarverslagen en Personeelsbladen Heineken

Jaarverslagen | 2005 | | pagina 32