Carlsberg: the top selling lager in the UK. Probably

Latest figures published by Nielsen have indicated that Carlsberg has dethroned Stella Artois as the biggest selling lager by volume in the UK off-trade. However, the InBev owned brand has reacted furiously to the news, pointing out that the tally includes brand extensions such as Carlsberg Export, Edge and Special Brew.

According to Nielsen the Carlsberg brand family sold 495 million pints, compared to 491 pints of Stella, though the “reassuringly expensive” InBev brand lived up to its famous strapline generating superior value: £524m at £1.06 per pint, versus Carlsberg’s £422m at 85p per pint. This indicates an 18% rise from the Danish giant, versus a slight 1% decline for its Belgian rival.
Stella has topped the UK charts since the mid-1990s, so this market move suggests that consumers are gradually shifting towards cheaper, lower-strength lager. In spite of dominating the market for a decade, the brand has been suffering in the last year: it has struggled in the face of increasingly negative perception and the high profile delisting by Young’s marked a significant blow.
Carlsberg has not issued any comment – presumably preferring to let the numbers do the talking. But InBev has issued a stinging riposte to the report, which it describes as “unfair”. The company points out that the stats are based on entire brand families – and that Carlsberg’s brand extensions are significantly more mature than its own variants, Peetermans Artois and Artois Bock. InBev UK president Stuart McFarlane has insisted that the brand remains the UK’s top-selling lager, pointing to hat fact that the main brand (excluding variants) outsells its nearest rival by 10% volume and 40% value.

Ben Grant, 09/04/08