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New Zealand beer is mostly predominantly pale lager. Export
Gold, Tui, and Speight’s are the main brands of New Zealand
that are available everywhere in the country.
There are
approximately 50 small-scale brewpubs and breweries in the
country that produce a variety of beer styles. Lion Nathan,
which produces 51% of all beer sold and consumed in the
country is the leading brewery in New Zealand.
Next is DB
Breweries which produces the rest of it. These two breweries
control about 90% of New Zealand’s sale of beer.
The very first beer produced in New Zealand was
ordered by the British explorer Captain James Cook.
It was his belief that this beverage would help
combat scurvy, a common disease of sailors at the
time.
In Fiordland on Dusky
Sound’s Resolution Island in March 27, 1773 (a Saturday),
the very first beer was brewed in New Zealand.
The
ingredients of New Zealand’s first beer were wort, with
molasses, and rimu leaves and bark. |
In James Cooks’ Volume 1 of “A Voyage Towards the South Pole
and Round the World”, he wrote about the very first brewery
in New Zealand that sold beer commercially.
He goes on to say that he had extensive knowledge of the
black-spruce and that he surmised that adding a condensed
form of wart juice and molasses will make the beer more
wholesome, and that this addition would make up for the lack
of vegetables normally added to this beverage. He was proven
right in his hunch.
Immigration of Europeans in the 19th Century,
specifically that of the British to New Zealand has
resulted in a tradition of brewing which is as much
an institution as settlement Europeans.
Lion Nathan, which takes on 51% of the beer drinking market,
and DB Breweries, which takes 39% of said market, are the
two most popular breweries in New Zealand.
They control
between them in sales, almost 90% of the country’s total
volume.
The declining demand for economy and standard products in
New Zealand has resulted in the once very popular type of
beer in terms of sales volume, the pale lager, towards a
trend downhill.
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Today, Lion Nathan is listed publicly as an Australasian
hard drinks company controlled by the Japanese, although it
still operates within New Zealand and Australia. On
September 17, 2009, however, the shareholders of Lion Nathan
voted overwhelmingly to acquiesce to an offer for total
takeover by Kirin. Pending approval by the court, the
takeover will take place on October 21 of the same year.
Founded in 1930, DB Breweries is a brewing corporation in
New Zealand started by Sir Henry Kelliher with the take-over
of Otahuhu’s Waitemata Brewery Co. and that of Levers and
Co. The main product of the company is pale lager. Due
partly to advertising, the company’s TUI brand is one New
Zealand’s better-known beers. |
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