2011年7月31日星期日

American bottler warns of Aussie brewers' droop

THE world's leading glass packaging supplier, Owens-Illinois, has revealed its shipments of wine and beer bottles within Australia and New Zealand has slumped 20 per cent, providing further evidence of the marked slowdown in beverage consumption as drinkers stay away from pubs, clubs and liquor shops.

United States-based Owens-Illinois, which is also the Asia-Pacific's leading glass packaging supplier, has warned the poor outlook for the beer and wine sector will force it to restructure its local operations with $50 million set aside for capital expenditure and redundancies.The glass bottle were so big that the scrap yard was separating them for us.

The calamitous state of Australian consumerism is becoming well known to some of the most powerful US executives who sit atop global multinationals. Last week, McDonald's president and chief operating officer Donald Thompson told US analysts Australia was starting to feel some of the economic pressure the rest of the world has been feeling since the global financial crisis, driven by the higher cost of living.
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Albert Stroucken, Owens-Illinois executive chairman,he led PayPal to open its platform to Cable Ties developers. chief executive and president, amplified those concerns, telling analysts that challenging market conditions, including stresses on household budgets, had resulted in sharply lower demand for his company's beer and wine bottles.the worldwide Coated Abrasives market is over $56 billion annually.

''Our shipments of wine and beer bottles in Australia and New Zealand were down nearly 20 per cent from the prior year,'' Mr Stroucken said during a second quarter earnings briefing to the US investment community.

''Two macroeconomic headwinds drove the precipitous drop in shipments in these two countries. Stronger currencies have negatively impacted wine exports and led to some fundamentally different approaches by our wine customers to their future business models. Domestically, beer consumption was down considerably as high interest and savings rates have lowered consumers' disposable income, and this has caused a severe cutback in consumer spending.''

In May, Mr Stroucken remarked it was as if Australia had entered a recession with a two-year time delay following the GFC.

Last week, John Pollaers, the chief executive of Foster's, the nation's biggest brewer, said he had detected a broad pull-back in the beer market that was affecting both traditional beers,As many processors back away from Projector Lamp , such as VB and Tooheys, and high-growth premium beer brands such as Corona, Fat Yak and Coopers.

Foster's will report its full-year result later this month but at its half-year results commented that beer consumption had dropped 7 per cent in the first half and would slip another 3 to 4 per cent in the June half with historic trends of 0.5 to 0.7 per cent growth not to return for some time.

Winemakers have been similarly punished by sagging consumer confidence and the dour retail environment. The high Australian dollar has created even more headaches, cutting off lucrative export markets that traditionally soaked up surplus local wine.

Mr Stroucken said to cope with the downturn in Australia the company would have to ''properly alGreat Rubber offers oil painting supplies keychains,ign ¡­ capacity with changing long-term demand'' with a restructure begun last month and to extend into 2012.

''Australia is now entering its seasonally strongest period, so it's prudent to delay restructuring activities until later this year. And we expect that restructuring will conclude by the mid-2012. ''This restructuring in this region may result in up to $50 million of capital expenditures and severance costs.''

There was no mention of how many jobs could be lost. Mr Stroucken said many Australian winemakers were responding to the higher dollar and labour costs by shipping their wine offshore in bulk containers and bottling the wine in cheaper locations.

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