Pivovary Staropramen, the number two brewer on the Czech market, made a CZK 2.2 billion loss last year. It was in profit the year before. The reason for the drop was mainly due to so-called impairment losses. The company’s sales increased by CZK 395 million year-on-year to CZK 4.6 billion. Operating profit EBITDA, i.e. earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation, fell by CZK 127m to CZK 408m due to the difficult economic situation.
Pivovary Staropramen ended the previous year with an accounting profit of CZK 441 million. Last year’s result was more than CZK 2.6 billion worse. In its annual report for 2022, which is available to CTK, the company said that the reason for the large increase in accounting items was a significant increase in interest rates due to high inflation and uncertainty both on global markets and on the domestic market as a result of the war in Ukraine.
“The reason for the lower operating profit is mainly due to the increase in input prices caused by the increase in energy and raw material prices as a result of the war in Ukraine,” said CFO Nemanja Vidovic.
The company sold 3.13 million hectolitres of beer last year. “Domestic sales grew by less than a percent, mainly due to the lifting of covid restrictions and at the same time due to a strategic change in the structure of domestic sales, which was implemented in the previous year,” the company said. It is now focusing more on the premium beer segment.
In addition to Czech beers Staropramen, Braník, Ostravar or Mustang, the Czech market also offers Belgian beers Stella Artois, Hoegaarden and Leffe. From 2021, it also sells Irish beers Guinness and Kilkenny.
Exports fell slightly from 976,000 hectolitres in 2021 to 952,000 hectolitres in 2022, due to the company’s decision to withdraw from the Russian market because of the war in Ukraine. The most important foreign markets are still Slovakia, Sweden, Germany, Hungary and Poland.
Staropramen breweries are part of the North American brewing group Molson Coors. In the long term, they have been ranked second on the Czech brewery market behind Plzeňský Prazdroj, which sold 7.3 million hectolitres of beer in the Czech Republic last year, up almost 12 per cent year-on-year.
The Czech Association of Breweries and Maltsters previously said that breweries in the Czech Republic brewed 20.55 million hectolitres of beer last year, up 950,000 hectolitres year-on-year. Beer consumption per capita also rose from 129 litres to 136 litres per year. Although beer production volume has picked up after two years of decline, it is still around one million hectolitres lower than in 2019 before the coronavirus pandemic. The production of non-alcoholic beers, including their flavoured variants, also rose by 13 per cent year-on-year to 1.3 million hectolitres.
Source: Staropramen and CTK
Photo: Staropramen
