Asahi to buy five eastern European beer brands

Big investment: Bottles of beer are transported on a belt at Plzensky Prazdroj (Pilsner Urquell) brewery in Plzen, Czech Republic. It is one of the five eastern European brands that Asahi is buying, – Reuters

TOKYO: Japan’s Asahi Group Holdings said it will buy five eastern European beer brands from Anheuser-Busch InBev for 7.3 billion euros (US$7.8bil), in the largest purchase of a foreign beer operation by a Japanese brewer.

Anheuser-Busch InBev had agreed to sell the brands, which include the Czech market leader Pilsner Urquell, Poland’s Tyskie and Lecher and Hungary’s Dreier, to help get clearance from competition regulators for its US$100bil takeover of SABMiller.