Brewed in Hungary Dreher Breweries

BREWED IN HUNGARY

Dreher Breweries Ltd, one Hungary’s oldest beer factories, has been operating successfully for nearly ten years as a subsidiary of SABMiller plc, one of the world’s largest brewers. Its flourishing partnerships with existing customers and its growth in the HoReCa sector will ensure that Dreher is in a position to move rapidly forward as the market increases. Edina Beale reports.

Dreher Breweries Ltd offers an extensive range of beer products; besides lager beers it also brews semi-dark, dark and wheat beers. Indeed, the company is proud of the fact that it currently produces three of the five leading Hungarian beer brands: Dreher, Arany Ászok and Kőbányai.

The company aims to develop its product range in accordance with the changing market needs. “This year we will enter the flavoured beer segment,” reveals Mr Andrei Haret, CEO of Dreher Breweries Ltd. “Research shows that this category will continue to expand in the coming years in Hungary. In the course of testing our new product, HB Zitrone, we have received very positive feedback; the consumers liked it, and described it as harmonic and refreshingly lemon-flavoured.”

Focused strategy

Over the past 12 months Dreher Breweries has reinforced its leading position in Hungary in this very competitive sector to around 30 per cent market share. “This is the result of several years of focused strategic and implementation work,” says Mr Haret. “More importantly, we have managed to grow in the HoReCa (hotels, restaurants, cafes) sector where there is still a real beer culture and where the best quality beers – mainly draught beers – are sold.”

Dreher recognises the importance of establishing, maintaining and developing its business with its trade partners to provide a strong yet flexible framework for the business. This networking is extremely important in the ever-expanding HoReCa sector, in addition to the more traditional niches. The company has spent time and energy ensuring that its sales

team knows stuff. This training has paid dividends, with the sales force being voted the best in FMCG industry in 2008.

In 2011, Dreher developed a marketing strategy that has brought benefits to the company, its customers and consumers. ‘Golden Fridays’ celebrates the end of the working week and the Dreher promotion provides a pint of Arany Ászok (Golden Aces) for the price of a standard glass. This is a simple 360-degree marketing campaign which has managed to bring consumers to come back to the pubs, thus raising brand awareness, increasing partners’ profits and keeping the customers very happy.

Despite increasing excise duty, smoking bans and unfavourable weather conditions, all of which have an impact on this sector, Dreher is optimistic about the future. The year 2011 saw a slight increase in performance over the previous four years. Whilst there are no immediate plans for investment, the company is satisfied that it can meet the demands of its customers and consumers and still has capacity to grow.

Promising future

As a leader in the Hungarian beer industry, Dreher Breweries strives to ensure its business is sustainable. It does of course strive to improve its own turnover, but acknowledges that to achieve this it must be supportive and encouraging of its customer base.

The HoReCa sector is an area of significant growth. The possibility of thousands of new customers means that the company is prepared to go that little bit further to help this sector expand. The ‘Golden Friday’ programme is a great example of the company moving forward to develop existing markets and the results are impressive, with an increase of around 6 per cent last year, following years of decline.

The Csendkirály (King of Silence) program is aimed at maintaining the delicate status quo between those looking to have fun and the local residents. It was launched in partnership with the downtown districts of Budapest and the representatives of the HoReCa industry. “HoReCa units generally realise 15 per cent of their turnover in the late evening hours, a time slot which is already affected by statutory restrictions in certain cities and some districts of Budapest,” explains Mr Haret. “Several associations of HoReCa professionals and municipalities have granted their utmost support to this programme.” This has been a great success and will continue in 2012.

Although irresponsible alcohol consumption affects only a small group in society, because of its negative health and social implications Dreher Breweries pays special attention to the issue and strives to mitigate the negative effects. The company encourages social dialogue on alcohol responsibility on its Facebook site and at the website alcohol.info.hu was created by the company for this purpose. n