Anheuser-Busch

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Anheuser-Busch

Anheuser-Busch , the world's third largest brewing company in volume after InBev and SABMiller, and the largest in the USA. The company is based in St. Louis, Missouri, United States and brews over 65 different beers and malt liquors. Anheuser-Busch's best known beers include brands such as Budweiser, the Busch and Michelob families, and Natural Light. The company also produces a number of smaller-volume and specialty beers, nonalcoholic brews, malt liquors (King Cobra and the Hurricane family), and flavored malt beverages (e.g. the Bacardi family and Tequiza). "A-B", as the company is often called, owns 12 U.S. breweries.

Holdings

Overseas, Anheuser-Busch operates 15 breweries - 14 in China and one in the United Kingdom; In China, A-B operates Budweiser Wuhan International Brewing Company, Ltd. and Harbin Brewery Group Ltd which A-B fully acquired in 2004. Chinese production of AB products in china started, in Wuhan, after their purchase of a local brewery in 1997. In the United Kingdom, the Budweiser Stag Brewing Company Ltd. produces and packages Budweiser.

In addition, A-B supervises locally brewed Budweiser in seven other countries: Argentina, Canada, Ireland, Italy, Japan, South Korea and Spain. A-B has 18 overseas offices.

A-B strategic equity investments include:

50% of Grupo Modelo in Mexico
27% of Tsingtao Brewery Company Ltd. in China.

In November 2004 A-B sold its 20% participation in CCU (Compañía de Cervecerías Unidas) in Chile to a Chilean Bank, in a public bid. Following the sale, A-B retains a non-controlling 10.8% stake in CCU-Argentina.^*

Anheuser-Busch owns Busch Gardens, SeaWorld, and several other amusement parks and resorts, as well as production, transportation and packaging operations related to its beer business.

The St. Louis Cardinals baseball team was owned by Anheuser-Busch from the mid 1950s until it was sold to a group of private investors in March 1996. Busch Memorial Stadium, paid for and built by the brewery in the early 1960s, was recently demolished and replaced by a new ballpark. A-B signed an agreement for the new ballpark to retain the "Busch Stadium" name on the new building.

(1) Source: Impact: Global News and Research for the Drinks Executive, Volume 33, Nos. 19 & 20, October 1 & 15, 2003.

Advertising

The company is known in the United States for its huge advertising presence, including a sports marketing division which creates advertising material for the Super Bowl and many other sporting events. Famous Busch television campaigns have included:

The "Gimme a light" spots;
Frogs saying "Bud-wei-ser." The ad campaign later spawned additional characters: Louie and Frankie the chameleons and an inept ferret hit man.
The annual Bud Bowl.
The "Waazzzup" series.
The "Real American Heroes/Real Men of Genius" series of humorous radio and television ads.
They market their beer through the name NASCAR Busch Series and on Dale Earnhardt Jr's #8 Chevy Monte Carlo
Bud Man is an advertising character for Budweiser beer. He is a superhero and appears on many products aimed at coeds on University campuses. He also inspired Duff Man, a character on The Simpsons.

Recently, Miller Brewing began a series of commercials which featured "referees" calling "penalties" on people for drinking Bud Light (the largest selling beer in the US), and they would then take the Bud Light and replace it with Miller. Anheuser-Busch responded with their own "referees" commercials in which referees were taking people's Budweiser and keeping it for themselves. One such commercial showed the "referees" being confronted by the police.

St. Louis Corporate Headquarters and Brewery

The world headquarters for Anheuser-Busch is in St. Louis, Missouri. The brewery there, the largest of the Anheuser-Busch breweries, was opened in 1852 and includes three buildings that are on the register of National Historic Landmarks. At the headquarters, near downtown Saint Louis, tours of the brewery are available to the public. The tour takes visitors through the complex, and those of the legal age can enjoy two free glasses of beer at the end of the tour.

The company keeps a rotation of its famous Clydesdale horses at its headquarters, and visitors to the brewery can observe the Clydesdales in their exercise field and see their places in the carriage house. The bulk of the herd is kept at the company farm in St. Louis County.

Some beer brands

Bud Dry is a dry beer created by Anheuser-Busch in 1989. It was the first dry beer produced by an American brewer, and has fewer calories than Budweiser.
Bud Ice is an ice beer, created by Anheuser-Busch in 1994. A light beer version was also released the same year, known as Bud Ice Light.
Natural Ice, popularly known as "Natty Ice", is an ice beer introduced nationally in 1996 (though released to select markets in 1995) when the practice of "icing" beer was adopted to increase alcohol content. Due to its relatively low price and high availability, it is popular at both high school and college parties in the United States. The original light version, Natural Light ("Natty Light"), debuted in 1977.
B^E (B-to-the-E) is a "specialty beer" created for the Budweiser brand. Described as a combination of a beer and an energy drink, it contains caffeine, guarana, and ginseng with 6.6% alcohol by volume. B-to-the-E is marketed with the slogan "Beer With Something Extra". It's an actual mixture of beer and energy drink, with the flavor that one would expect from such a combination.

U.S. mega-breweries

Besides the St. Louis brewery, Anheuser-Busch manufactures beer for U.S. consumption using an additional eleven "mega-breweries" in ten states:

External links

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