After the third attempt to sell Beogradska Industrija Piva (Belgrade Brewing Industry, BIP) failed, the assets of the company which used to be one of the biggest breweries in Serbia are now up for sale.
The assets for sale include the production complex on Vojvode Radomira Putnika Street in Belgrade, with more than 26,000 square metres, the juice factory on Zrenjaninski put in Belgrade with 11,000 square meters, the Čačak beer and malt factory, commercial facilities in Obrenovac, Kosovska Mitrovica, Alibunar, a shopping centre in Kragujevac and a flat in Budva. The whole package is valued at RSD 4.17 billion (approx. USD 42 million).
The Agency for Licensing of Bankruptcy Administrators announced today that the deadline for submitting offers for the purchase of BIP is August 16.
BIP used to be one of the leading breweries in Serbia. The company had a capacity of about 1.5 million hectoliters of beer in the 1970s and produced every fourth beer which was sold in the former state of Yugoslavia. A first attempt to privatize the state-owned brewery in 2004 failed. In 2007, 51.8% of BIP was sold for EUR 26.5 million to the Swedish-Lithuanian consortium United Nordic Beverages, which promised to invest another RSD 40 million (EUR 5.1 m) in it. However, the privatization contract was cancelled in 2010 due to non-fulfillment of the investment obligations.
In September 2015, BIP entered bankruptcy proceedings and officially went bankrupt in early 2016. One year later, Macedonian company M6 EDEN SRB and owner Svetozar Janevski, President of Tikveš Winery and former general manager of Pivara Skopje, one of the top beer and soft drinks companies in the Republic of Macedonia, leased the brewery for the annual price of EUR 900,000 but broke the lease two years later claiming the concept of BIP had no future after the city de announced a new urban regulatory plan for the area of the brewery. A last attempt to sell or lease the brewery in July 2019 failed because no interested party made a bid.
