Baltika Ltd, a Russian brewing company, sold about 10 million liters of beer during six months this year, which is 12% higher than the last year sales for the same period, informs Akipress. The beer market is small, but still attractive to foreign suppliers. Currently, there are beer importers from Russian, Kazakhstan, China, and Europe. If 10 million liters make up about 30% of the market, than the total annual sales for the country would be about 66 million liters, roughly $ 50 million. It is official data, and the real sales might be much higher.

Local beer brewing companies cannot compete with imported beer for several reasons. As the general manager of Baltica Ltd says, they are in a different, lower segment. There are few brewing companies in Kyrgyzstan, and their quality of beer is quite good, but it is not stable. I think that there are some investment opportunities for beer brewing companies in Kyrgyzstan.

Shifting to a higher beer segment would not be an easy task to do. Keeping in mind, that the local brands are not very popular, one of the options is to bring foreign famous brand, e.g. from Czech Republic or Germany, or even Irish ale. Opening a brewery through a subsidiary or joint venture will benefit in lower overheads, though start-up expenditures might be pretty high. With proper management, the brewery can become a profitable business, especially, if beer would be exported to neighbor countries.