The end of Brau Holding International (BHI), a joint of Heineken (49.9%) and privately owned Schörghuber Group (50.1%), was announced at the management meeting on Thursday, which was held in the Paulaner Lounge of Allianz Arena, stadium of the German football champion Bayern München. By the middle of the year, all companies within the BHI holding will be transferred to the new Paulaner Group GmbH & Co. KGaA. In the new company, the Heineken share will decrease to exactly 30%. Schörghuber then holds 70% of the merged company.
Roland Tobias (53), head of BHI and the beverage departement of Schörghuber, installed a new, ten-headed management board. As already announced earlier, Paulaner sales director Heiner Müller was replaced by Raphael Rauer, who worked before with Roland Tobias at AB InBev’s Becks brewery in Bremen and who will now be responsible for retail sales within the management board.
Paulaneris the number 6 beer brand in Germany, selling 2.32m hl in 2016. Thereof 1,52m hl is white beer, which makes Paulaner Weissbier the most consumed beer of its kind in Germany. Since 2002, Paulaner Brewery belonged to equal parts (50%) to the German Schörghuber Group and to Brau Holding International, which in turn was owned to 49.9% by Dutch Heineken group. The old structure meant a lot of redundant reporting and management functions, which are now being removed.
Two years ago, the brewing site of Paulaner was relocated from the traditional site at the Nockherberg on the high banks of the Isar river to an industrial location in Langwied on the outskirts of Munich. Due to technical problems related to the new site, the brewery was not able to satisfy all demand for its beers in 2016 and lost about 100,000 hl of sales (-4.3%). Instead of a planned reduction of 90 people, Paulaner had even to hire more staff. Therefore the planned restructuring can also be seen as a clearance for Paulaner and his CEO Tobias.
