The Hindu Business Line : Cobra Beer plans to set up second facility in Maharashtra

COBRA Beer, owned and managed by Mr Karan Billiomoria, is planning to set up a second greenfield brewery in the country in Maharashtra to exclusively cater to the southern region.

The company has a technical collaboration with Mount Shivalik in Rajasthan to cater to the domestic market.

Mr Perses Billimoria, Regional Director of Cobra Indian Beer Pvt Ltd, told Business Line talks have already begun and setting up of the facility could take anywhere between 8-18months time.

When asked about the setting up of the brewery in Andhra Pradesh, he said: "Karan is from Andhra and it is a pet State for him. But this does not preclude that we would not be looking at any other State for the setting up of the greenfield project."

He was in the city to officially launch Cobra beer in the Pune market though the product has been in the market for the past six months. He said in Maharashtra it was looking at Nagpur, Solapur, Kolhapur, Sangli and the Konkan area.He said during the Phase I, New Delhi, Maharashtra, Rajasthan, West Bengal, Andhra Pradesh and Goa are being tapped and during the second phase it would include the markets of Uttar Pradesh, Karnataka, Kerala, Haryana and Orissa. He said completion of the national launch would take time, as it would have to reapply for licences in certain States, which would happen only in April 2006.

Asked why it had taken three years after it was launched in the country, he said the beer was launched in 2002 and was taken up as a study. The company at that point of time was importing the beer from the UK and "once we were confident about the beer that the Indian customers wanted, we decided to have a technical collaboration with Mount Shivalik in Rajasthan which happened in 2004."

He said the current demand for beer cases was about 85 million cases and was growing at 7.5 per cent per annum. He added that of this about 35 per cent was accounted for by the premium beer segment and "since we are relatively new, our target is to touch one million cases by three years.''

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