STORIESeven have their roots in the 19th century.
First we mentioned AbInbev: by their very
definition they are “the largest brewery in
the world”. It produces 31.4% of the world’s
beer (source Barth Report 2018) and has
achieved these incredible numbers merger
after merger, acquisition after acquisition:
Anheuser-Busch, an American brewery
founded in 1852 in Missouri, merged with
Inbev in 2008, itself the result of the merger
between the Belgian group Interbrew (which
in the meantime had purchased Labbat,
Canada, and Beck’s, Germany) and Ambev,
a Brazilian group born from the merger of
the country’s two largest producers, Antarc-
tica and Brahma. The final act (for now) took
place in 2016, when it also acquired what at
the time was the second world group for
beer production, Sab-Miller. Meanwhile, the
giant also reaped among the craft breweries:
in the now distant 2011 the acquisition of
one of the main actors of the American craft
revolution, Goose Island, caused a sensa-
tion; then it was the turn of 10 Barrel, Ely-
sian, Breckenridge, Four Peaks, Wicked
Weed in the USA; Camden Brewery in the
UK, Boostels in Belgium, Birra del Borgo
in Italy as we mentioned, Boxing Cat in Chi-
na and many others around the world. Obvi-
ously AbInbev is not the only giant on the
market: in second place, but very far from
the pole position, is Heineken (born in
- is among the world’s producers, with
its 11.2% divided between various brands
such as Amstel, Affligem, Murphy’s, and in
Italy, Dreher (already since 1974), Moretti,
Von Wuster, Prinz, Ichnusa, recently Birra
Messina, without forgetting the acquisi-
tion of an Italian craft brewery, Hibu (MB)
through the subsidiary Dibevit. Third place
is occupied by a large Chinese group, China
Resources Snow Breweries Ltd. which
produces the world’s best-selling beer,
Snow. Fourth place is held by another well-
known brand: Carlsberg (1874) known in
Italy also through the Tuborg, Grimbergen,
but above all Poretti brands. In fifth place
we find Molson Coors, a very active group
on the US and Canadian markets but which
did not miss the opportunity to acquire sev-
eral craft breweries including Trou du Di-
able in Canada and Birradamare in Italy.
The Barth Report 2018 shows a last inter-
esting fact: the top 40 brewing companies
in the ranking produce 88.3% of the world’s
beer. The rest, a small 11.7% is in the hands
of other groups or industrial breweries and
artisanal microbreweries: this is enough to
understand the marketing and marketing
strength of a multinational company that
gets to play its cards on the craft sector.CRAFT VS. INDUSTRIAL
«The most important among the trends that
characterized the last decade of Italian craft
beer one is undoubtedly represented by the in-
vasion of the industry in the craft sector - says
Andrea Turco, creator of one of the most
popular thematic blogs, Cronache di Birra- the phenomenon has materialized with two
parallel strategies: to enter the market with