Brasseries du Congo currently
has six beer brands in its range:
Amstel, Primus, Ngok, Kronenbourg
1664, Kronenbourg Export and
Guinness. Primus and Ngok belong in
the standard segment, whilst Amstel
and Kronenbourg Export are posi
tioned in the premium segment.
Guinness is a speciality beer. There
are no other brands. Imports are neg
ligible because of the high duties
described above.
Brasseries du Congo therefore
has the Congolese beer market all to
itself. But the monopoly position
held by Brasseries du Congo is not a
superfluous luxury. As commercial
manager Stephane Charzat explains:
"We are certainly faced with compe
tition. People can only spend their
money once, and if they gamble it on
horse races, then they can't buy any
beer with it. It may seem strange,
but the horse races are our competi
tor."
Mr Charzat uses this example to
show that the consumer is fickle and
his needs are therefore difficult to
define. Questions such as 'where
does the consumer buy his beer and
when?' are hard to answer. The capi
tal Brazzaville (population 950,000)
has as many as 400 distributors.
Some of them have a warehouse no
bigger than a living room. The distri
butors buy the beer from the brew
ery and then rent a pousse-pousse to
distribute the beer. A pousse-pousse
is a push-cart on which as many as
fifty (full) crates are sometimes stack
ed. Two men push and shove the cart
through the streets, on their way
from or to the distributor.
CUSTOMER BASE
The wholesale trade sells to both the
on-premise and to private individu
als. Since the customer base is
usually of modest size, it is hard
work to make a living as a distribu
tor. Many distributors are financially
weak and so the brewery is confront
ed almost daily with wholesalers
who are closing down their business.
Mr Charzat: "Today wholesaler A will
come along and buy fifty crates of
Amstel. Tomorrow he will have dis
appeared and wholesaler B will visit
and buy the same quantity. Ob
viously, things like that make it very
difficult for us to get an insight into
and a grip on distribution."
The brewery does not have a
truck available for distributing prod
ucts to customers. The customers
queue up on the brewery site and
collect the beer themselves. Brewery
trucks are only used to transport the
beer to the soft drinks factory and
soft drinks to the brewery, so that
the same range can be offered at both
points for sale to the men who stack
up their pousse-pousse day after day.
13
Up to fifty crates can be stacked
on the 'pousse-pousse'.
