Business News of Monday, 14 May 2001

Source: NCS

Guinness Ghana initiates new growth and cost reduction strategies

Guinness Ghana limited says it is focusing on capturing and growing the winning share of premium drinking occasions in the country to drive the growth of the company in the medium term.

This will be done by concentrating on making inroads with the company’s two premium differentiated brands Guinness stout and Malta Guinness in the two high value markets in Ghana, beer and malt drinks. Guinness has a twenty seven percent share of the volume of the beer market in the country while the Malt category takes care of 85 percent of the volume of the market. According to the managing director of the company, Devlin Hainsworth, the company’s growth projections are only based on increasing shares.

The Guinness boss explained that among other strategies for operational efficiency, the company has developed a project paradigm to reduce cost. He said the cost reduction initiative is designed not to have any impact on the quality of its products but do things more efficiently in line with world-class standards.

Half year ended 31 December 2000 results show that the company has made some improvements. Against the same period last year, turnover has increased by 56.7percent at 121.4 billion cedis.