Liquor prices up 5% today

Boitshepo Majube | Monday December 2, 2013 16:41

 

Sechaba Brewery Holdings Limited announced last week, Friday at the unveiling of their financial results for period ended September 2013, that liquor prices will rise from Monday.

The Group Managing Director, Johan De Kok stated that they planned for the increase in order to get the pricing right.

'If you don't get your pricing right it might affect your volume sales, so it was important for us to put the right measures in place so that our volumes are not that much affected,' De Kok said, adding that they are not worried about the levy.  Currently, alcohol levy stands at 45% and Monday's additional 5 percent will take the price on alcohol beverages and spirits to 50% effective December 2, 2013.

Meanwhile, consumers of Chibuku will be happy to note that its price is going to remain the same, thanks to the new packaging the group has used.  'The new packaging of Chibuku has enabled us to keep the prices where they are, and will not be affected by the new increase,' De Kok said.   The fact that Chibuku prices remain the same comes at a time when Sechaba stated that they have managed to stabilise the free-fall in Chibuku sales, which were badly affected by the traditional beer regulation.   'We believe we have managed to stabilise the sales, thanks to different initiatives we have engaged,' De Kok said.

Despite the group saying it has stabilised Chibuku in the market, their latest financial results show that Chibuku and Phafana declined by 23.4%.  'Carling Black Label and Castle Lite continued to lead the recovery in market share and thus limiting overall volume decline,' De Kok said, citing that Mooka Mageu also performed extremely well growing by up to 17% in the process. 

 De Kok said they have started exporting Eyethu to South Africa and prospects are looking good for the long run.

'We have been getting good feedback concerning our product in that market,' he said.

He further said they expect the volumes to grow in the next two to six months of Eyethu hitting the SA market.  One of the reasons they started exporting Eyethu to SA was to save the much-needed jobs in the country, as they were forced to amalgamate both BBL and KBL in a move to save the group some loses.