Diageo is to launch Guinness Zero, an alcohol-free version of the world’s most famous stout, in Indonesia, following a tightening of the law on alcohol distribution, the Irish Times reports.
The paper reports that the country’s larger supermarkets will still sell standard Guinness alongside the new edition. Though the brewer says it always had the intention of an alcohol-free version of the product, a recent ban on selling beer in smaller stores made the product-development “even more important,” Graeme Harlow, Diageo’s MD said.
Diageo commands a 15-per-cent stake of the Indonesian beer sector, although it has seen its product sales nosedive by 40 per cent, as the number of retailers permitted to sell its beers went down to 40,000 from 70,000.
Up until last, year the Muslim-majority nation was the fifth most important market for Guinness in terms of volume.
© 2015 European Supermarket Magazine – your source for the latest retail news. Article by Peter Donnelly. To subscribe to ESM: The European Supermarket Magazine, click here.
