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Austria’s Ottakringer and Vöslauer to merge
Austrian beer maker Ottakringer Brauerei AG and mineral water producer Vöslauer AG are to merge. The two companies have been part of the same holding company, but will now formally merge in a deal to be closed at a special shareholders’ meeting on 21 September and backdated to 1 January 2009.
Family brewery chief Sigi Menz, who will be chairman of the board of the new firm, said that the name of the merged company will be ‘Ottakringer Getränke AG’ and that Ottakringer’s foreign subsidiaries and Vöslauer would be listed on the Vienna stock exchange along with Ottakringer under the new name.
Christiane Wenckheim will manage Ottakringer, and Alfred Hudler will manage Vöslauer. The Wenckheim and Menz families will have an 88% interest in the new firm, up from the 76% interest they’ve had in Ottakringer.
The new firm is expected to have annual turnover of about €200m. Ottakringer had turnover of €83m last year, while its Bavarian subsidiary Innstadt Brauerei had turnover of €10m and its Hungarian subsidiary Pecs had turnover of €28m. Vöslauer had turnover of €77m last year.
The news comes after recent figures showed Ottakringer bucked trends in the Austrian brewing business by turning in good first-quarter results. Its domestic sales rose 0.6% year-on-year in the first quarter of 2009, while Austria’s overall brewing industry shrank by 10.6%.
Menz said the reason for the company’s relatively good performance could be that Ottakringer had recently become the first Austrian beer given the ‘AMA-Gütesiegel’ seal of approval by the Austrian Agriculture Association (AMA).
Source: Austrian Times
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