KYIV. April 27 (Interfax-Ukraine) – Persha Pryvatna Brovarnia, a large brewery in Ukraine, has received a license form Heineken Concern to produce Czech beer Krušovice and will start its production early June.
“This year we received a license from Heineken Concern to produce Krušovice and in a month will start producing this famous Czech beer,” the co-owner of Persha Pryvatna Brovarnia Andriy Matsola said in an interview with Interfax-Ukraine.
He said that usually it takes three or five years to receive the beer production license from Heineken. Persha Pryvatna Brovarnia started negotiations with Heineken in 2012 and at the end of 2015 and early 2016 the brewery launched Heinekel beer production in Ukraine under the license.
“The vice president of Heineken personally flied [to Ukraine] to inspect. The whole structure was inspected: from the head office, retail staff, atmosphere and policy of the company to tests of production facilities. In 2015, Persha Pryvatna Brovarnia was the fourth company in the world that received this license from Heineken, not being in ownership of the concern,” Matsola said.
He said that Heineken does not plant to enter the Ukrainian market.
Persha Pryvatna Brovarnia intends to launch production of hard lemonade at a plant in Radomyshl and enter the cider segment.
“Last year we bought equipment from Germany’s KHS. Now we will bottle our products in 0.44 liter and 0.5 liter cans. The canned beer market in Ukraine is only 6% of the total volume. We assess our market share at 10%, as we are working in the upper mainstream and premium class. We wanted to install a can line a long time ago, but earlier this project was loss-making. Now it is time to realize it,” he said.
Persha Pryvatna Brovarnia was created in 2004. It manages two breweries with a total capacity of 2.4 million hectoliters of beer per year in Lviv and Radomyshl (Zhytomyr region).
