Carlsberg (brewery)

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Carlsberg A / S

logo
legal form Aktieselskab
Aktiengesellschaft (Denmark)
ISIN DK0010181676
founding 1847
Seat Copenhagen Denmark
DenmarkDenmark 
management Cees' t Hart (President and CEO ),
Heine Dalsgaard (Deputy CEO and Chief Financial Officer )
Number of employees 47,464 (2015)
sales 65 billion . DKK (8.8 billion euros ) (2015)
Branch brewery
Website www.carlsberg.com

The Carlsberg A / S based in the Danish capital Copenhagen is the fourth largest brewery group in the world. In the German-speaking area it is represented by the brands Holsten , Astra , Duckstein , Lübzer and Gatzweilers Alt , among others .

Carlsberg should not be confused with the German Karlsberg brewery from Homburg .

history

JC Jacobsen, brewery founder
Advertising in Malawi

The history of the brewery group dates back to 1847 when company founder Jacob Christian Jacobsen the Carlsberg Bryggerier Kjøbenhavn in the district of Vesterbro opened. The company premises of those days are now known as Gamle Carlsberg and are a popular tourist destination in the capital, with guided tours, beer tastings and cultural events.

Carlsberg began to sell its beer abroad very early on: In 1868 Carlsberg first sold beer in Edinburgh . In 1939 Carlsberg alone accounted for 55 percent of all British beer imports.

In 1882 Jacobsen's son Carl followed his father's example and opened his own brewery, Ny Carlsberg . After the death of his father, Carl merged the Gamle and Ny (old and new) companies to form the joint company Carlsberg Breweries . Carlsberg used the competitive advantage created by an industrial production process to expand its business. Another result of this endeavor is the bottom-fermenting yeast fungus Saccharomyces carlsbergensis , which was grown in the Carlsberg research laboratory in 1883 and named in 1908 by Emil Christian Hansen after the brewery.

The first brewery that the group opened abroad was established in Malawi in 1968 . In Europe, on the other hand, they entered into several mergers and joint ventures , in which a short time later they acquired an absolute majority. In this way, the group incorporated successively the domestic main competitor Tuborg (1970), the British Tetley brewery (1992-1997) and the Orkla Group (2001-2004). The Tuborg takeover in particular opened up a lucrative second pillar for the group: The competitor's premises were gradually converted into expensive residential and business centers and have since secured additional income.

Carlsberg also expanded on the German market with the takeover of the Holsten brewery in spring 2004. In Switzerland, Carlsberg has also had a subsidiary with Feldschlösschen Getränke since 1999 . Carlsberg's most recent takeover was in April 2005 when it took over the majority of Malaysia's Malaysian Berhad Brewery .

From mid-2013 at the latest, global purchasing, production and logistics will be coordinated via a new distribution center in Ziegelbrücke , Switzerland . The Carlsberg Supply Company , founded for this purpose, will employ up to 200 people.

On April 2, 2014, the Federal Cartel Office imposed on the subsidiary Carlsberg Germany as well as several other breweries in Germany and the Verband Rheinisch-Westfälischer Brauereien e. V. Fines for prohibited price fixing for beer totaling 231.2 million euros.

The brands

Carlsberg

The house brand Carlsberg, a Danish beer brewed in the Pilsener style, is the market leader in Denmark and one of the world's most popular beer brands. The green lettering with the stylized hop leaf and the English slogan probably the best beer in the world ( which, by the way, was spoken in the original Orson Welles advertisement ) have largely remained unchanged since the 1970s. Carlsberg also appears as a brand in sports sponsoring and as a namesake for cultural institutions (see below). Carlsberg sells one of the most expensive beers in the world under the name Jacobsen Vintage 3 .

Tuborg

The thirsty man (Den tørstige mand)

Tuborg is the smaller of the group's two Danish breweries; it was founded in Copenhagen in 1880. In Germany, unlike in Denmark, Tuborg is brewed in Hamburg according to the purity law of 1516. It is characterized by a particularly sweet smell and medium-dry, sweet taste.

Det grønne (the green, because of its green label) has become particularly famous internationally for its advertising: the advertising sign The Thirsty Man by the painter Erik Henningsen , which shows a sweaty hiker who longs for refreshment, has been reproduced millions of times over the years and is considered by some to be one of the most important Danish works of art of the 20th century.

Another striking feature is the Tuborgflasken , built in 1888 , a 30-meter-high observation tower in the shape of a beer bottle, which is located in Hellerup not far from the center of Copenhagen.

Another well-known advertisement for the brewery is the TV commercial for Tuborgs Julebryg , a special Christmas beer (in Denmark Christmas beers are an essential part of the juletid , the pre-Christmas season): the cartoon is about Santa Claus , who delivers presents in the nocturnal snowstorm, but then himself decides at short notice to hurry after a passing Tuborg truck and ends with a Christmas greeting to the audience. This spot has been broadcast in countless variations for many years.

The beer production of the Tuborg brewery, located in the Copenhagen suburb of Hellerup, was outsourced in 1998 and most of the site was converted into apartments.

In 2005 the beer production of the Carlsberg brewery in the Copenhagen district Vesterbro was outsourced to the city of Fredericia, about 100 km north of Flensburg . Since then, the Danish brands Carlsberg, Tuborg, Kongens and Wiibroe have been produced there and around 60% of Danish beer is brewed there. Only the corporate administration and the Jacobsen brewery are located at the Copenhagen location. The buildings are currently being redesigned as Carlsberg By [Carlsberg City]. Up to and including 2014, a large beer festival was held every year in May in the now demolished former bottling hall, at which numerous small and large Danish - and to a lesser extent foreign - breweries presented their products. This festival continues, but now in a nearby former locomotive workshop.

Tetley's

Tetley's Brewery from Leeds in the English county of Yorkshire has some parallels to Carlsberg in its origins: both were founded in the first half of the nineteenth century (Tetley 1822) and were significantly influenced in the first few years by the relationship between founding father and son; in this case they were Joshua and Francis Tetley, who quickly turned a family malt processor into the leading brewery in northern England, with at times more than 300 company-owned pubs .

Tetley made headlines around the world in 1911 when the magician Harry Houdini nearly died trying to escape from a brimming fermentation vat. The brewery's answer to the incident: "Why want to flee from the best beer in the world?"

In 1993 Carlsberg and Tetley's, which is mainly involved in rugby sponsorship, merged into a joint company, but for a long time the business has been mainly run from Copenhagen.

Brands in Germany and Switzerland

Former Carlsberg brewery in Copenhagen, seen in
The Olsen Gang , among others, sets the course
The Carlsberg headquarters in Copenhagen with the elephant gate created by Vilhelm Dahlerup in 1901
Types of beer

Germany is one of the most important national markets for Carlsberg; Here the group is less well represented with its main brand or Tuborg, but with local established brands:

formerly

In Switzerland, Carlsberg is the market leader with around 45 percent market share through its subsidiary Feldschlösschen , which it acquired in 1999 , with the brands:

On August 31, 2010, the Carlsberg company decided to close the location in Friborg for economic reasons.

Brands in the rest of Europe

With its main brands Carlsberg and Tuborg and many regional brands, Carlsberg is the market leader in Northern Europe and holds significant market shares in Russia, the Baltic States and Southern Europe. The main competitors in the European market are the Dutch Heineken and the Belgian AB InBev .

Cultural, scientific and sporting engagement

As early as 1876, Jacobsen himself founded the Carlsberg Foundation , in which he bundled his cultural patronage. Just two years later, the Foundation opened its first museum, the Museum of National History, in Frederiksborg Castle in Hillerød . The most important museum of the foundation, however, is the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek , which is jointly managed with the Copenhagen City Council. It is one of the most important non-royal museums in Denmark.

Another mainstay of the foundation's activities is the promotion of science. Bearing in mind that the brewery owes its worldwide success to a large extent to the discoveries of its research department (in particular of Saccharomyces carlsbergensis and Kjeldahl's nitrogen determination ), the foundation, which according to the statutes must always hold the majority stake in the brewery, promotes research in the natural sciences, mathematics, philosophy and the social sciences. Particularly in biotechnology , the foundation is very active here, it operates the Carlsberg Laboratory ( Carlsberg Research Center ).

Carlsberg has extensive involvement in sports sponsorship : for many years, for example, Liverpool FC advertised Danish beer on its jerseys. The Carlsberg logo also adorns the jerseys of the Danish clubs FC København and Odense BK , and in Asia Carlsberg sponsors the golf tour there. Carlsberg was also one of the six EUROTOP sponsors of the 2008 European Football Championship and the official beer sponsor of the 2016 European Championship . Since there is a ban on alcohol advertising in French football stadiums, Carlsberg is not directly mentioned in the perimeter advertising. The company's subsidiary Tetley is one of the main sponsors of the English rugby league.

criticism

Carlsberg is criticized because the group patented three brewing barley varieties together with Heineken .

Others

A tuborg or tuborghat ("Tuborg hat") or tuborgparentes ("Tuborg bracket") is a typographic term in Danish and denotes a curly bracket . The sign got its name from its shape, which is reminiscent of the special sunshades used in advertising for the Tuborg brand. Another explanation is the resemblance to a bottle cap .

Web links

Commons : Carlsberg Group  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. Executive Board. Grocery Newspaper, accessed January 8, 2016 .
  2. a b Carlsberg: Annual Report 2015. (PDF) (No longer available online.) Archived from the original on April 10, 2016 ; accessed on May 14, 2016 .
  3. The Handelsblatt listed Carlsberg A / S as the fourth largest brewery in the world in 2014. The world's largest brewers accessed on July 27, 2014
  4. Carlsberg chooses Ziegelbrücke for worldwide purchasing . In: Basler Zeitung of August 31, 2012, accessed on August 31, 2012.
  5. Carlsberg creates up to 200 jobs . In: Südostschweiz.ch of August 29, 2012, accessed on August 31, 2012.
  6. Bundeskartellamt: Cartel proceedings against brewers with further fines concluded on April 2, 2014.
  7. Feldschlösschen to concentrate beer production in Rheinfelden. August 31, 2010, archived from the original on September 3, 2010 ; accessed on August 31, 2010 (English).
  8. What does "Probably" mean in EM perimeter advertising? June 20, 2016, accessed June 27, 2019 .
  9. ^ Protest against Carlsberg and Heineken's beer patent. June 6, 2017. Retrieved June 27, 2019 .
  10. Hannes Koch: Patents on brewing barley: Scandal in the beer district . In: The daily newspaper: taz . June 7, 2017, ISSN  0931-9085 ( taz.de [accessed June 27, 2019]).