Molson has announced that it plans to close its Regina brewery by March 2002, which will help the brewer to cut costs by a total of $150m a year. In a statement Molson said that it hopes to provide jobs for at least half of the 85 employees currently working at the plant. Small wonder that the unions were not pleased as the announcement coincided with Molson releasing the results for its fiscal 2001 ending 31 March. The company reported profit of $108.4m or $1.82 a share, up 32% from the previous fiscal year. Revenue rose to $2.48 bn from $2.37 bn.

Cervejaria Cintra which currently holds 1.5% of the Brazilian beer market has issued an ambitious five year plan to boost sales both domestically and internationally. There are four breweries in the pipeline with the first one opening near Portugal’s capital Lisbon this summer. It cost US$58m to build and will be able to produce 1.5m hl of beer, 30m litres of soft drinks and 30m litres of mineral water per year. Annual revenue is expected to be US$23m. The other three plants will open in Brazil. Total investment in all four ventures will be in excess of R$400m (US$170m).

The Group Cervecería Polar C. A. in Venezuela has installed three high- performance crate washing systems of the German specialist manufacturer Ludwig Bohrer Maschinenbau GmbH at the breweries in Maracaibo in single lane and in San Joaquin in double lane design.

Genesee Corp., the US’s number five brewer, announced that the management buy-out of its Genesee Brewing Co., led by Chief Executive Samuel Hubbard Jr., would not be completed until December as the buyers needed more time to complete financing. The shares of Genesee subsequently fell US$ 2.25 to US$ 34 in over-the-counter trading. Shares so far have declined 81 % this year.

In a recent feature in the Australian edition of Reader’s Digest, Jim Koch, self-styled "Creator of the first craft-brewed American beer", Samuel Adams, gave the following invaluable advice to young entrepreneurs: "Life is very long, so don’t rush to make decisions. Life does not let you plan." Is that what he learned while working for the Boston Consulting Group?

Did we really need that? Gluek Brewing, formerly Cold Spring Brewing Co. of Cold Spring Minnesota, has announced that it would launch a brand, Hard E, which is supposedly the world’s first "hard energy beer". The malt beverage contains ginseng extract, vitamins A, B, & C, and has a citrus taste.

Brazilian AmBev will pay US$ 47 million for the Uruguayan brewer Cerveceria y Malteria Paysandu, which would double AmBev’s stake in the market to 48 %. Only in September, AmBev had bought Uruguay’s brewer Compania Salus in a joint deal with the French group Danone. AmBev will control a 95.3 % stake in Paysandu which produces the Nortena and Prinz brands, and whose brewery has a capacity of 300,000 hl. The malting facility has a capacity of 90,000 tons annually.

Listed craft brewer Sleeman has signed a sales, marketing and distribution agreement with Brauerei Beck to sell the German brewer’s premium beers in Canada. Financial details are not known. After the announcement of the deal, Sleeman shares closed 35 cents higher at CAN$6.50.

Coca-Cola Co. announced that it would invest US$ 1 billion in the Brazilian market over the next two years. The investment will be used for marketing and social programmes as well as for the modernisation of plants and the increase of production capacity.

Fate happens and sometimes it ain’t bad. What happened was that an aspiring film-maker from Chicago, Charles Stone, 35, produced a three minute film, entitled "True" and showed it to an Irish campaign director at DDB Worldwide, Vinny Warren, 33, who had the account of "dad’s beer", Budweiser, at his hands and no clue as to how to rejuvenate the brand. After having watched Stone’s three guys sitting in a bar and talking nonsense, he had the idea to ring up St. Louis and tell the gentleman at the other end of the line: "Eh, whassup? We got your TV ad." Or so it must have happened because Anheuser-Busch liked the idea of buying a script that had not been written by an ad man and certainly not for promoting a beer brand. Well, it’s called life imitating art or rather ads.".