REPORT ON TIGER BEER
SUBMITTED BY:VANDANA GUPTA 3 - SEM MBA – IB (AMITY UNIVERSITY , JAIPUR)
Company Profile: APB and Tiger Beer
Asia Pacific Breweries is an Asian brewery company founded as Malayan Breweries Limited (MBL) in 1931, in a joint venture between Heineken International and Fraser and Neave, and given its present name in 1990. It currently controls 30 breweries in 12 countries in the Asia Pacific region, selling over 120 brands of beer and beer variants. Heineken is the largest shareholder with a 42.5% stake. The company is listed on the Singapore Exchange.
Tiger Beer Launched in 1932, Tiger Beer became Singapore's first locally brewed beer. It is a 5% abv bottled pale lager. As APB's exclusive flagship brand, it is available in more than 60 countries worldwide including the USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and various countries in the
Tiger beer is the flagship brand of Asia Pacific Breweries and is brewed in Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, Malaysia and China. The 5% above bottled pale lager was launched in 1932 and is available in over 60 countries worldwide across Europe, USA, Latin America, Australia and the Middle East.
Based on the Singapore’s Beer Industry Profile by Dat a monitor in December 2007, APB
has a market share of 69.5% in the local beer-consumption market. Tiger Beer shares this statistic with other brands, like Anchor Beer and Baron Strong Brew, which belong to the same company. Other than dominating the domestic market, Tiger Beer has also established itself in the Asia-Pacific region and the European markets, at the same time winning over many discerning drinkers. Currently, the brand can be found in the world’s major cities like
Guangzhou, Mumbai, London, Amsterdam, Bangkok etc. Over the years, Tiger Beer has won various international accolades and awards. The most recent major award is the Gold medal in International Golden Lagers of 2008 New Zealand International Beer Awards and Gold medal in the European Style Pilsener category of the 2004...
After months of renovations Asia Pacific Breweries, the home of Tiger Beer, is again open to the public. Considering how expensive it is to drink in Singapore, S$16 is a bargain for a brewery tour and the chance to drink your fill of Tiger Beer at the “tasting session” that follows.
The tour begins in a shiny new welcome room filled with retro advertisements, collectable bottles, and other memorabilia from the brewery’s 80 -year history in Singapore. Here we met the tour guide who shared some interesting factoids about their products – did you know that during World War II a low- alcohol beer called “Tiger Cub” was produced due to a shortage of ingredients? After a video about the founding of the brewery by colonial British brew-masters striving to formulate the perfect tropical beer, th e brewery tour proper begins. This is also where photography stops -- the process is apparently a secret! We followed the tour guide into the secure area, up a staircase, and into a steamy room that smelled like bread – the brewing room! Our group, a sizeable 40some people, paused briefly on the viewing platform to gaze down at the huge vats while the guide gave an introduction to beer’s basic ingredients like hops and barley. Whether it was due to the
underwhelming response or the stifling heat, we quickly moved on to the next stop on the tour.
The process of producing of beer is an elaborate process. There are three main steps in producing the beers that you drink: brewing, fermentation, and filtration. Brewing is the mixing of the ingredients. Fermentation is the process in which the sugars in the yeast are broken down into alcohol. Filtration is the removing of particles from the beer. All three of these steps are very vital to maintaining a high quality beer
With its endless flow of kegs, cans, and bottles, the automated bottling room was much more impressive. Listening to the guide I picked up a few facts and figures like, when operating at full volume, the brewery produces 40,000 cans and 32,000 bottles of beer per
hour. Of all that beer half is consumed in Singapore and half is exported around the world. After a brief Q&A session and a few minutes to fantasize about being left alone with all that beer, that concluded the formal part of the tour. Actual brewery tour running time: no more than 15 minutes. Finally it was time for the real reason any of us signed up for the brewery tour – drinking! The beer sampling takes place in Tiger Tavern, a British-themed pub so polished it should be open every day to everyone, not just tours. We were given 45 minutes to sample all six beers produced on site – Heineken, Guinness, Barron’s, ABC Stout, Anchor and, of course, Tiger. The glasses may be small, but you can drink as much as you want!
Though the Tiger Brewery tour wasn’t as in -depth as I had expected, it was an enjoyable
hour. That said, the trip out to western Singapore where the brewery is located takes much longer than that. You’d need to drink a lot of beer to make it worth your while. Brewery tours are available weekdays at 10:00, 11:00, 13:00, 14:00, 16:00, and 17:00. While I was part of a very large group, the guide said 20 participants is typical for afternoon tours and morning groups may be as small as 2 – but who wants to drink beer at 10am? The Asia Pacific Brewery is located at 459 Jalan Ahmad Ibrahim in western Singapore and the tour costs S$16 per person.
