King Cobra beer set to roll out in Bihar brewery

Global beer giant Molson Coors Cobra is set to roll out its King Cobra brand of beer from its brewery in Bihar, a company official said Thursday.

"The brewing capacity has been doubled and the packaging capacity has been tripled after we took over a local brewery at Bihta near Patna in 2011. We are ready to roll out our famous King Cobra brand beer from a world-class full-fledged quality laboratory in place" Kandy Anand, president of Molson Coors International, told media persons here.

He said the company has invested Rs.63 crore in the expanded project till date. "We are committed to 100 percent investment in Bihar that amounts to Rs.250 crore," he added.

Anand said the multinational company, which currently sells Iceberg 9000 beer in the state, was now expanding its footprint to Punjab, Haryana and West Bengal.

According to him, BIhar is one of the smaller markets for beer consumption in the country. The market size of seven million cases is likely to shrink to six million cases owing to some policy issues on the pricing (taxation) front.

Last year, inspired by developments in Bihar, London-based entrepreneur and member of the House of Lords, Karan Bilimoria, decided to triple the capacity of his Cobra beer in the state. "We are upgrading and expanding our brewery in Bihar. We are increasing the capacity to 4 million cases by February from 2 million now. By the same time next year, the capacity will more than triple to 7 million cases," Bilimoria had then said.

Bilimoria's Cobra entered into a joint venture with Molson Coors in June 2011 to jointly brew and market the beer in India and overseas. In the global venture, the US company has a 50.1 percent stake, and the rest with Bilimoria, and in India it is a 51:49 venture.