Martens. Bermas. Albrau. Galati, Suceava, Onesti. The smallest three brewers in Romania are not necessarily the last independents in the field, as other beer businesses not connected to the multinational giants are that of brothers Ioan and Viorel Micula, the biggest local food group, as well as Romaqua’s, the producer of the Borsec water, which has recently entered the beer market with the Albacher brand. What the three small producers, all of them focused around Moldova, have in common is that they lack large production capacity, nationally known brands and promotion, on a market dominated more and more authoritatively by the world’s biggest brewers.

Heineken, InBev and Ursus Breweries have bought local producers one by one, and the sale of Bere Azuga at the start of this year ended the row of major transactions in this field. ”The rest are not important because they have very low market shares and low production capacities,” says Gheorghe Grec, one of the former shareholders of Bere Mures, who believes only the real estate factor could help stir some interest in the takeover of one of the three producers. Martens Galati, Bermas Suceava and Albrau Onesti are present in their areas with less established brands and production capacities of about 200,000 hectolitres (in comparison, Heineken, the leader of the market, has a technical capacity of 7.7 million hectolitres, 1.6 million hectolitres of which acquired with the takeover of Bere Mures). In a word, they lack exactly what a multinational seeks when it looks at acquisitions on a local market – a significant production capacity and strong brand.

”The producers that are still independent do not have any powerful brands and the major ones already have enough production capacity in Romania,” believes Shachar Shaine, chairman of United Romanian Breweries Bereprod, which makes Tuborg, adding that the multinational he represents has not been and is not interested in any acquisition. The three small producers have not given too much thought to this lifeline: Vasile Joanta, the manager of the Galati-based producer Martens, says that although he has not received any takeover offers until now, just ”various questions exploring the possibility”, he is open to such talks in the future.