Hans Essaadi

The management of  Nigerian Breweries Plc has said that the brew company’s decision to deploy  10 percent of its annual media budget to responsible drinking campaign, is to deepen awareness among consumers on the need to drink responsibly.

The Managing Director of the company, Mr. Hans Essaadi gave the explanation   at the company’s 2023 Pre-AGM media event, held in Lagos, recently.

He stated that despite being a brew company, NB Plc  remains unwavering  in its commitment at ensuring that its products, especially its alcoholic beverages, are not abused.

The NB Plc boss added that one of the company’s ways of walking the talk is to dedicate  a significant chunk of 10 percent of the company’s  annual marketing budget to the responsible drinking campaign, as a way of encouraging responsible consumption of alcohol.

Describing Year 2020 as a challenging one for businesses, Hans identified  the energy crisis, induced by the Ukraine-Russia war  and other socio-economic challenges, as some of the factors, responsible for difficulties experienced by individuals and businesses in the year.

“For the manufacturing sector, it was challenging to import critical materials and meet payment obligations to overseas partners.

“The liquidity issue made it difficult for foreign investors to repatriate the proceeds  of their investments and also created a wide disparity between official exchange rate and the autonomous  market rate, with huge cost implications  for businesses,” he stated.

According to him, the resurgence witnessed in the nation’s brewed product market in 2021, and which continued in first five months of 2022, was reversed as a result of the headwinds, resulting in the total market ending with a medium to high single digit volume decline.

But, despite its operations being negatively impacted by those challenges,  the company was still able to grow its revenue by 26 percent in the year, weather the storm and maintain its leadership position in the sector by leveraging data and other digital tools, and using brand mix improvements and strong pricing, to enhance its route to market, he stated.

“Driven by brand mix improvements and strong pricing, our Net Revenue grew by 26 percent from N437.2 billion in 2021 to N550.5 billion in 2022. Cost of Sales, Marketing and Distribution expenses were under pressure due mainly to inflation, devaluation of Naira and high energy cost. Although the Operating Margin was flat, the Operating  Profit grew by 26 percent  from N41.8billion to N52.6 billion.

“Our Profit after Tax Margin went down driven mainly by the increase in Forex losses due to Naira devaluation and foreign currency scarcity. Nevertheless, the Profit after Tax went up by 8 percent from N12.9billion to N13.9billion,” he added