Asahi Beer

Asahi Group Holdings, Ltd. ; アサヒグループホールディングス株式会社
legal form	Kabushiki kaisha ( joint stock company )
ISIN	JP3116000005
founding	1889
Seat	Sumida , Tokyo Japan;
management	Naoki Izumiya
Number of employees	28,055 (as of 2018)
sales	2,120 billion yen (as of 2018)
Branch	brewery
Website	www.asahigroup-holdings.com
	As of December 31, 2018

Asahi Beer KK ( Japanese アサヒグループホールディングス株式会社 Asahi Gurupu Horudingusu Kabushiki-gaisha , English Asahi Group Holdings, Ltd. , formerly: アサヒビビール Asahi Bīru Kabushiki-gaisha is a Japanese brewery , English Asahi Bīru Kabushiki , Ltd. ) is a Japanese brewery Based in Sumida , Tokyo Prefecture . Asahi Beer is listed on the Nikkei 225 stock index, ISIN JP3116000005. Currently there are breweries in Fukuoka , Minamiashigara , Motomiya , Moriya ,Nagoya , Nishinomiya , Saijō , Sapporo and Suita . The corporate headquarters are in the Tokyo district of Azumabashi and the German headquarters are in Cologne . With an annual output of 59 million hectoliters , Asahi Beer is the seventh largest brewery in the world. (As of 2017)

history

The company's forerunner, Ōsaka beer ( 大阪麦酒 ), was founded in 1889. Asahi beer was first made in the Suita Brewery in 1892 . In 1906 the brewery merged with Nippon Beer in Tokyo and Sapporo Beer in Sapporo to form the Dai-Nippon Beer Group ( 大日本麦酒 , "Greater Japan Beer"), "Asahi Beer" continued to exist as an independent brand.

In 1949, when the Zaibatsu were dissolved, the group was broken up and divided into Asahi Beer - at that time still with the Kanji 朝日麦酒 , only since 1964 in Katakana - and Nihon Beer (today's Sapporo Beer ). In 2010 the group was reorganized as Asahi Group Holdings KK ( アサヒグループホールディングス株式会社 , English ~, Ltd. ), a new Asahi Beer KK is now a 100% subsidiary. In January 2009 Asahi Beer acquired from Anheuser-Busch InBev a 19.9% stake in the Chinese Tsingtao brewery . Asahi is the second largest shareholder in Tsingtao with a total stake of 31%. In February 2016, Asahi submitted a binding offer equivalent to a good 2.5 billion euros to take over the beer brands Grolsch , Peroni and Meantime from SABMiller ; the sale is a condition for regulatory approval to acquire SABMiller by AB InBev and was completed in October 2016. In this context, the brewery is also buying five Central European beer brands that were previously part of SABMiller (Lech and Tyskie in Poland, Pilsner Urquell in the Czech Republic, Dreher in Hungary and Ursus in Romania) for the equivalent of 7.2 billion euros. The takeover is expected to be completed in the first half of 2017. In 2019 the acquisition of the Australian brewing company Carlton & United Breweries was announced. Carlton & United was also previously an AB-InBev subsidiary. The sale is scheduled to take place in early 2020.

Asahi Beer - Headquarters designed by Philippe Starck , Azumabashi 2012
Asahi Beer - Azumabashi Headquarters, Sumida Tokyo 2010
Asahi Plant - Moriya Ibaraki - Japan, 2007
Asahi Factory - Suita Osaka - Japan, 2007
Asahi Brewery - Heathwood Queensland - Australia , 2017

Products

Asahi is called a “premium” product by the manufacturer and is brewed from malt , hops , corn and rice . It has 5 percent alcohol by volume, is of the type of the internationally widespread American and international lagers and, like these, has a rather less pronounced taste compared to European varieties.

Outside of Japan, it is very popular in South Korea, Taiwan, and China. Otherwise Asahi is now exported all over the world, including Germany . Since 2000 it has also been manufactured under license in Europe (e.g. the Czech Republic, England).