范 例 欣 赏 The China Brew 中国的啤酒

South African Breweries may not be well known to the average factory worker who swings a brew after work, but it is still at the poker table playing the China hand when most other international brewers have thrown down their cards and quit. It entered the game in 1994 and is now the No.2 brewer on the mainland, where its marketing strategy could be viewed as a blueprint for how to invest in China. 南非酿酒公司也许并不为工作之余总要喝上一杯的普通工人所熟知,但是当大多数国际啤酒公司退出 “中国” 这盘牌局时,它却留在了牌桌旁。自1994年进军这个市场后，它现在已是中国大陆第二大啤酒厂商，它的营销战略可以看作是如何在中国投资的一个样板。

On May 30, SAB upped the ante in theglobal beer contest, announcing that it would buy Miller Brewing from the United States’ tobacco-and-food giant Philip Morris. The deal makes SAB the second-largest brewer in the world behind rival Budweiser brewer Anheuser-Busch. 5月30日，南非酿酒公司在这场世界啤酒竞赛中加注，宣布将收购美国烟草食品巨头菲利普·莫里斯公司麾下的米勒啤酒公司。这笔交易使南非酿酒公司一举成为世界第二大啤酒公司,仅次于生产百威啤酒的安霍伊泽——布施公司。

For an insight into SAB’s competitive edge, all one needs to do is look at how it operates on the mainland. The secret to its China success is that it buys local breweries, improves productivity and then pushes the local brand. It doesn’t push it own Castle Lager or its premium Czech brand, Pilsner Urquell, on local markets halfway around the world, but rather plugs what is already locally consumed. “We concentrate on local brands and focus on the second-tier market, away from the extremely overtraded market segment characterized by competition from state-owned breweries,” explains Mitch Ramsay, the Johannesburg-based SAB international spokesman. 若想深入了解南非酿酒公司的竞争优势，我们只需要看看它是如何在中国大陆运作业务的。它在中国成功的秘诀是购买当地的啤酒厂，提高生产能力。然后推广当地品牌。它没有将自己的著名品牌拿到地球另一边的中国来推销，反而大举推广当地已经进入消费领域的品牌。总部设在约翰内斯堡的南非酿酒公司的发言人米奇• 拉姆齐解释说：“我们把力量集中于当地的二线品牌，以避免贸易极度过量而且面临国有企业剧烈竞争的那部分市场。”

SAB holds a 49 percent stake in the joint venture China Resources Enterprises Beverages, or CREB, while thye Hong Kong-listed firm, China Resources Enterprises, which has strong backing from the mainland government, owns the other 51 percent. CREB annually churns out about 30 million hectoliters of beer. The only bigger China player is China’s oldest brewer, Shandong-based Tsingtao Brewery, which annually produces 57 million hectoliters of beer, enough to serve 12 billion people a pint of beer each. 南非酿酒公司在合资企业华润啤酒集团拥有49%的股份，而得到中国大陆政府强力支持的香港上市公司华润集团拥有剩下的51%股份。华润啤酒集团每年酿制大约30亿升啤酒。产量超过它的惟一企业是中国最古老的啤酒厂——青岛啤酒厂。青岛啤酒厂每年生产57亿升啤酒，能够为120亿人每人提供一品脱啤酒。

“SAB has been the visibly most successful of the foreign brewers,” says Ilan Stermer, a Johannesburg-based beverages analyst for Barnard Jacobs Mellet Securities. Many other foreign brewers steamrolled into China in the 1990s with hopes of selling their own “international” brands. They soon found themselves bleeding money and quickly sold off breweries or pared down the operations. But SAB has continuously expanded. For example, Britain’s Bass, Australia’s Fosters and Miller all invested money in China breweries in the 1990s that they later sold. Meanwhile, SAB has just kept buying stakes in regional breweries. From Far Eastern Economic Review 在约翰内斯堡工作的一位饮料业分析家说：“南非酿酒公司显然是诸多外国啤酒厂家中最成功的一家。”许多外国公司在20世纪90年代涌入中国市场，希望能够推销自己的“国际”品牌。它们很快发现自己开始亏本，然后纷纷清仓或者缩小规模。但是南非酿酒公司却一直在扩展业务，比如，英国的巴斯公司、澳大利亚的富仕达和米勒公司都在20世纪90年代开始投资中国啤酒市场，但后来又卖掉了投资的企业。当时南非酿酒公司才刚刚开始不断购买地区啤酒厂的股份。 ——译自 《远东经济评论》