Imported beer selling well in Vietnam despite high prices

Vietnamese drinkers surprise foreigners not only with their huge beer consumption, but also with their desire to drink imported alcohol regardless of exorbitant prices.

While a number of new breweries capable of producing billions of liters of beer per year are under construction across Vietnam, beers from international brands are also being imported in large quantities.

The imported products dominate the deluxe segment of the market, of which 3 billion liters of beer were consumed last year.

Imported beer available in Ho Chi Minh City includes Budweiser, Oettinger, Steiger, Asahi, Corona, and Heineken, even though the Dutch brewing company has breweries in Vietnam.

In 2012, 122 batches of beer imports passed through the Ho Chi Minh-based Cat Lai Port. These included 40 different brands from the US, Germany, the Netherlands, the Czech Republic, Japan, and Thailand.

Import volumes dropped only slightly in 2013, but the port received more new brands from China and South Korea like Tsingtao, ICING, and Loroyse.

In Hanoi, beer products imported from France, Belgium, and the US are also widely available.

Imported beer is considered a deluxe product, and is thus not cheap. A bottle of the popular Corona, for instance, fetches some VND34,000, while Stella Artois is sold for VND43,000 a bottle.

However, these products are imported at much lower prices. The import price for Corona is only VND7,700 per bottle, while Stella Artois is imported at VND7,300 per bottle.

The exorbitant retail price of these beers is the result of a number of expenses including the import tariff, excise and value-added tax, and profits for the importers and distributors.

Drinking more beer than water

The owner of a beverage shop in Phu Nhuan District said his beer sales are always higher than those of soft drinks.

The man added that he could sell up to 70 cartons of beer in only a few days before the Lunar New Year late last month, while soft drinks like coke were less popular.

“It seems to me that people drink more beer than water,” he joked.

Similarly, Kim Phuong, another beverage seller in the same district, said she emptied her stock of 200 beer cartons during the Tet season, while only half of the coke stock was cleared.

Meanwhile, the manager of a restaurant said beer accounted for 60 percent of the total expenses at each table. The restaurant sold around 40 cartons, or some 320 liters, of beer on a daily basis, she said.

The beer consumption per capita in Vietnam is currently 27 liters per year, while in 2000, it was only 10.04 liters, according to a preliminary report by the Vietnam Beer, Alcohol, and Beverage Association.

A food expert said the real figure could be much larger thanks to the explosive growth of the brewing companies. “While their capacity used to be millions of liters per year, it is now counted in billions,” he said.

Michel de Carvalho, owner of the Heineken brand, told reporters that in 2010, Vietnamese consumers drank 200 million liters of his beer, only behind the US and France in the list of 170 worldwide markets where Heineken is available.

Carvalho forecast that in 2015, Vietnam would become the world’s largest Heineken consuming market.