Tusker finds

Vanuatu

Tusker finds its taste buds

By Roman Grynberg

I JUST knew that Vanuatu’s National Breweries Ltd was in serious trouble when, at the beginning of this year while visiting Port Vila, the waitress at the Rossi Hotel looked at me in disbelief when I ordered a Tusker, the lager produced in Vanuatu. She curled her lip and said in indignantly in Bislama Yu onefela rubisman. As I had known her for a number of years and as the ‘rude school’ of waitressing had gratefully never arrived in Vanuatu I felt sure that Tusker was not long for this world.

Among Ni-Vanuatu in particular the beer had developed a most unfortunate reputation of poor and inconsistent quality. The food and beverage industry is a very nasty and unforgiving place you only mess up once and that kills your market forever.

The view by my indignant waitress at the Rossi was confirmed by many Ni- Vanuatu who had simply gone off Tusker and just refused to drink it. The Vanuatu National Breweries which was estab lished in 1992 as a joint venture between Pripps (50 per cent) the Vanuatu National Provident Fund (25 per cent) and the Vanuatu Development Bank (25 per cent). After an investment of US$2.5 million and with a management by the experienced Swedish company the gov ernment thought that they would have a product that would not only be a credit to the country but also a source of excise revenues in a country that desperately is looking for ways to diversity and spread ts tax base.

Unfortunately, the first half year of nanagement of the company did not go imoothly. The Swedish management of he company made the first mistake by joing for a lager among Ni-Vanuatu who lave been raised and nurtured carefully iv Australia’s Carlton and United on

Victoria Bitter. Pripps chose a marketing

trategy that was very much against the irevailing taste pattern of consumers, fhe new lager taste did not go down well vith the Ni-Vanuatu. The other problem hat Tusker confronted in Vanuatu was hat the beer was only available in bottles md not in cans. In Melanesia, where onsumer studies have found in product iter product, that local consumers are ery conservative and a change in ontainer can often prove to be a major

mistake. Throughout Melanesia new entrants in the food processing industry often attempt to copy existing popular brands as a least risk marketing strategy.

The most famous case is the very popular ‘777’ brand of canned mackerel m PNG which was copied as TIT by a new entrant who realised that the vast bulk of the population was illiterate and as long as tne label appeared the same con sumers would not be able to differentiate.

This strategy was, however, not entirely successful and while TIT captured a reasonable share of the market it has never replaced ‘777’ brand. In the case of Vanuatu beer, the problem was that the canning of beer would have required yet further substantial investment and would have meant a write-off of existing bottling facilities.

However, what compounded matters was the fact that the government of Vanuatu did not give Tusker a high enough tariff protection to compete with the Australian breweries. The Australian breweries, reeling from the effects of the recession, are desperate to maintain market share and keep their rates of utilisation up which meant that they are extremely competitive and offer very low prices so as to penetrate the Pacific islands market. The Vanuatu govern ment was reluctant to raise import duties any higher than they already are. As a result, Tusker did not receive the massive trade protection that these mini breweries sometimes need in order to survive.

The taste variability problem of Tusker, in Vanuatu, stems from an unfortunate accident. The Swedish com pany Pripps sent a brew master from Sweden to supervise production and maintain quality. According to normally well-informed sources the reason for the taste variability in Tusker in the first few months of operation stems from the fact that soon after the start of production the brew master was involved in a car accident and lost his sense of smell and taste. As a result, the taste of one batch was completely different from that of another.

However, this was not the sole cause of the problem of the breweries. One hotelier in Port Vila, who deals regularly with National Breweries said: “tne old management of Tusker was of the view that we locals had to be taught that we should drink Tusker. They thought that

we should be the ones making the changes and not them.’

By the end of 1992. the company was already in serious trouble and the board brought in new management headed by Murray Parsons a tough-minded brew ery manager with many years of experi ence in the region. The new management set about trying to turn the product around. They began to look for markets for the product and while initial attempts were successful, the obvious solution was that given that there was a recognised problem with the product there was a need to introduce an entirely new brand as well as improve the quality of the existing product.

Finally in July, the company hit upon a new approach that appeared to be a clear winner. National Breweries intro duced Vanuatu Bitter a distinctive product in a can that used the national colours of the Vanuatu flag and also had the distinct marketing advantage of looking very much like the Victoria Bitter can but with the much darker shade of green of the Vanuatu flag. The canned product is not made in Vanuatu because National Breweries is only geared up for bottling.

When I asked Parsons why he was

importing rather than producing locally

he said: “it is simply impossible to produce locally it would cost us another $2 million to set up a canning facility and given the share of the local market we could realistically hope to capture we would be lucky to be operating it one day a month. At some time in the future when we have a big enough market we will be looking to producing the product locally but at the moment the economics are all wrong.”

The product was launched in Vila at a huge glitzy affair attended by hundreds of Vila residents and foreign visitors at Port Vila’s newest night spot the Flamingo on Vila’s main street. Accord ing to Parsons, the first container is already sold and while it is still early

days, judging by the positive initial

reaction from customers. Also positive quality control have taken place and the Tusker brand has established itself in the marketplace. Tusker has a strong tourist following and a growing base of expatri ate drinkers. Parsons has certainly found the spot and National Breweries looks like it has found its taste buds again. □