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SCMP Reporter

Shenzhen's best selling beer, Kingway, is stepping up efforts to penetrate the already crowded Hong Kong market.

 Red chip Guangdong Brewery Holdings, which owns Kingway, has bought billboard advertising space at both entrances to the Hong Kong Cross Harbour Tunnel.

 The company paid more than $2 million to rent the billboards for 10 months, said financial controller Donald Chau Kam-wing.

 Executive director Chen Haotian said the company had been selling Kingway Beer in Hong Kong for more than a year and wanted to boost its profile.

 'The mainland remains our targeted market and we understand the competition in Hong Kong is very fierce.

 'But as a Hong Kong-listed company, we want to let Hong Kong consumers know our product and to promote the name of the beer locally,' he said.

 He said the initial response to Kingway Beer had been positive in Hong Kong.

 The beer is imported and sold by Guangnan Holdings - a company also ultimately owned by Guangdong Enterprises (Holdings).

 Mr Chau said sales in Hong Kong accounted for a very small percentage of the company's total production.

 'We sold several hundred tonnes of beer in Hong Kong last year. In value terms, they were worth less than half a million Hong Kong dollars,' he said. Guangdong Brewery's marketing plans in Hong Kong follow completion of its plant number two in Shenzhen, which has doubled annual production capacity to 400,000 tonnes.

 The managing director of Shenzhen Kingway Brewing, Zhou Dongxiang, expects plant number two, which started trial runs in late August, to produce 80,000 to 100,000 tonnes of beer this year.

  Of all mainland beer brands, Tsingtao Beer has the largest share in the Hong Kong market. Few other mainland breweries sell beer in Hong Kong, although some of them, such as Zhijiang Beer and Snowflake Beer, were popular decades ago.



Kingway bids to lift HK beer-market share