Gabor Bekefi

- In the first nine months of this year, Carlsberg Serbia has increased its share in the domestic beer market by 1.3%, to a total of 24.6% - Gabor Bekefi, acting director of that company, said today.

He said that Carlsberg had achieved such result in the conditions when beer sales in Serbia had dropped by about 5% on an annual basis against the last year's level.

Bekefi pointed out at a press conference that the company had exported about 19% of its beer production in the first three quarters of 2011, mainly to neighboring countries, Israel, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Switzerland, France, Austria, and Australia.

During this year, Carlsberg invested EUR 5.5 million in the improvement of the production, whereas 3 percent of the profit was invested in the development and education of employees.

Explaining the reason for the 5% drop in sales in the Serbian beer market against the last year's level, Bekefi said that the prices of raw materials had been increased during the first three quarters of 2011, with the prices of corn, malt and packaging glass going up by 60, 1.5 and 1.4%, respectively.

Carlsberg CEO said that that company had produced about 1.3m hectoliters of bieer in the period January - September 2011 in Serbia, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Montenegro, thus registering a 4.7% growth against the same period last year.

Carlsberg launched a brand new category of alcohol drink in the market of Serbia in early 2011 - Somersby Apple cider.

Since this product has achieved a great success in our market, Bekefi announced Wednesday that that drink would be produced in Serbia as of 2012.