New spirit in the bottle

Europe’s beer industry is in a rather difficult situation Hungary’s. Domestic consumption is way below 70 litres/person. Import beers’ share is 5-6 percent, which includes the products directly imported by retail chains. According to Sándor Lóránt Kovács, corporate development director with Dreher Sörgyárak Rt. consumer behaviour changed: people prefer drinking beet at home – this trend has a negative effect on the HoReCa segment. Borsodi Brewery attempts to win new consumers by putting special beers on the market. Balázs Ruip, the company’s trade marketing manager told Trade magazin that last year they were the first in the medium-priced category to put Borsodi Friss, a lemon-flavoured beer on the market. This year Borsodi Búza, a wheat beer is their latest innovation. Contrary to what most experts say, Gyula Jaszenovics, the majority owner of Mexhun Holding thinks that the beer specialties market is shrinking, especially in the HoReCa segment, because economic recession reduced sales of higher-priced beer specialties. János Tamáska, co-owner of beer importer Belgaco Kft. experienced a growth in beer specialty sales. From the turnover of the Hungarian beer market 97 percent is realised by lagers. However, all big distributors have dark and wheat beers in their portfolios and their innovation activities mostly concentrate on these. The proportion of all wheat beers sold in Hungary is hardly above 0.5 percent. Erdinger offers the widest selection of wheat beers: besides he classic version they also have dark, bock and non-alcoholic and other wheat beers. We learn from Zoltán Karsai, the Hungarian representative of Erdinger brewery. Experts see an improvement in Hungary’s beer culture and breweries know that a lot depends on them in creating ‘the new type of Hungarian beer drinker’.