Brewer looks to Africa investment

“We are still looking at around 400 to 500 million dollars a year ... for the next three to five years,” Mark Bowman, SABMiller’s managing director for Africa said.

“There’s quite an attractive growth in markets outside South Africa so we will be investing basically to meet and be ahead of demand,” he added.

SABMiller’s Africa business, which excludes South Africa, is the group’s biggest recipient of capital expenditure and its fastest growing, with underlying volumes in the last three months of 2011 up 11 per cent.

Mr Bowman said the London-based brewer, which is also listed in Johannesburg, will use the money to build two to three breweries each year across the continent, where some breweries are running at or near full capacity.

Africa is home to a billion people and, after a decade of relative political stability, dozens of fast-growing economies. Although still poor, it is increasingly seen as the next big growth market for consumer goods.

But average beer consumption, at 8 litres per person per year, pales when compared with about 70 in North America or Europe, suggesting that few Africans can afford the beverage, which is seen as a status symbol. Mr Bowman said if one includes the home brew market – where the beverage is cheaper – beer consumption on the continent is just as big as in other developed markets.