"People in Europe often have
no clue about what's really
going on in Africa," says René
Kruijt, Bralirwa's Dutch
Commercial Director.
Educating for the future
THE WORLD OF HEINEKEN
Heineken management trainee, Dinesh Sonak. Serving draught beer in
Africa generally is difficult, he told me, because the beer has to be kept at
constant low temperatures. Sonak is helping to introduce the new David
draught beer system, whereby the beer is transported in self-contained
kegs and cooled in refrigerated dispensers, in selected bars and restaurants
in Kigali. And the fact that he is doing so, and that global beer giant
Heineken sees a market for draught in Rwanda, is another sign of the
country's recovery.
Some of the economic adjustments over the last fifteen years in Rwanda
are graphically represented by a chart on Anand Chaurasia's wall.
Chaurasia, an Indian mechanical engineer, is the Chef Brasserie at the
Bralirwa brewery in Gisenyi, a small town on the northwestern border of
Rwanda. It is here that the two main beers of the country (Primus and
Miitzig) are produced. Amstel, brewed under licence at the Heineken
affiliate in neighbouring Burundi, is imported and distributed by Bralirwa in
Rwanda. The chart shows a series of bars rising from near zero in 1994 to a
high in 1998; after that production sank to about half that level and it took
six years to approach the previous high.
"That's when the government raised taxes and revenues on our
products," Chaurasia says, pointing to the year 1998. Like other people who
work for Bralirwa, the country's only brewing and bottling company (which
Heineken owns in a 70-30 partnership with the government), he is
philosophical about the tax and revenue rises. "We're in continual
discussion." He is especially proud of the fact that the brewery, which
employs 530 people, puts a lot of emphasis on training and also provides
very good health care for employees and their dependants at its in-house
medical facilities in Kigali and Gisenyi.
Heineken works in partnership with Coca Cola International, in the soft
drinks business, in Central Africa. Moreover, local production of Amstel, one
of Heineken's two international brands, is scheduled to commence in early
2006 at the brewery in Gisenyi. Chaurasia was proud to say that his brewery
had recently passed a gruelling range of tests designed to show that it was
capable of producing this beer to Heineken's high standards.
Training is a key component of the company's strategy, and not only in
operational areas. As a Heineken-owned company, Bralirwa is committed to
the global company's policies on corporate responsibility, which include
water-cleaning and agricultural support programmes, as well as business
ethics training. During a visit to the brewery at Gisenyi, around 30 mid-
level managers and technicians were sitting in a meeting room of the
brewery, discussing the company's code of business conduct (See box).
Rwanda, then, is also a good market for a global company like Heineken to
be in, and one with a good deal of potential. "People in Europe often have
no clue about what's really going on in Africa," says René Kruijt, Bralirwa's
Dutch Commercial Director, who was Sales Director in Slovakia before
moving to Africa. "Bralirwa has seen an impressive growth over the last
two decades, excluding the war. Africa can be a very good business
environment. It offers better business opportunities than many people in
Europe believe.
"Some 67% of the Rwandan population is under 25," he adds. "All those
people already represent a potential market for soft drinks, and will one
day be a formidable market for its brands of beer when they reach legal
drinking age." Kruijt is so enthusiastic about the potential that he is
implementing a new set of commercial excellence tools, including ways to
conduct trade censuses in rural Africa, schemes for segmenting the wide
variety of outlets, cold drink programmes, new ways of distributing the
range of products and proper trade marketing activities. These
programmes are certainly in line with the company's standard of
excellence in other countries, he feels.
Alphonse Byusa, Bralirwa's Rwandan Corporate Affairs Director, agrees
with his colleague's positive outlook. "Changes to the economy, with the
government investing in infrastructure and microfinance, mean that as time
goes on people have more money to spend on entertainment," he says.
Byusa, who grew up in the Congo after his family fled the country in 1959,
estimates that the informal market in home-made banana beer and wine is
Bralirwa Brewery in Gisenyi, Rwanda
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