South Africa: SABMiller will ensure there is no beerless Christmas in the region

All of SABMiller's South African breweries are running flat out -and SA is just entering its peak consumption period with blistering heat predicted. The man to be tasked with making sure that cataclysmic disasters like beerless Christmases don't happen is Clifford Raphiri, who will next month become the manufacturing director of SAB, the key South African unit of SABMiller, the Business Day reported on October 26.

MR. Raphiri, an engineer, will be the first black manufacturing director of SAB, and will make up one of eight directors on the second rung of local company hierarchy reporting to MD Tony van Kralingen. He will have to ensure the quart bottles marching along the production line like miniature soldiers continue being filled at a rate of five bottles a second.

The challenge for brewers around the world is to turn the vagaries of a biological process into a manufacturing line that is predictable, constant and efficient.

Mr. Raphiri asserts to be able to recognise key characteristics of culture at SAB beer plants, having worked at three of them over a 13-year period. He says the culture of Alrode is one of "positive leadership". The plant also has a reputation for labour unrest, but he claims this is a thing of the past.

The Alrode plant was built originally as a fairly small operation, making less than 2-million hectolitres a year. The plant now produces 7,4-million hectolitres.Over the past decade, urbanisation has exploded in Gauteng, and manufacturing in the province is beginning to find its footing.The Alrode plant's geographical efficiency advantages are significant, says Mr. Raphiri.

But efficiency in beer plants is quite difficult to measure. A lot depends on the volumes they produce, larger plants seem more efficient than smaller ones.

SABMiller has a matrix that it updates every year to determine its most efficient plant in SA, and over the past 10 years Alrode has won the prize only once.

One efficiency measure is the amount of water used per bottle of beer made. Naturally, a lot of water is used in the brewing process -- but a lot more, sometimes as much as five-and-a-half times as much, is used in total. Hygiene is crucial in a brewery, and much of the water is used for cleaning.

A key challenge for breweries is to try to decrease their water to beer ratio by recycling water.Mr. Raphiri says the ratio is already lower in SA than elsewhere -- about 4,5l of water is used for every litre of beer produced, compared with the international average of about 5l.SAB is in the fortunate position of being large enough in SA and dominant enough as a producer to be able to assume that its growth will be strongly correlated with that of the country.

And so it has been, with beer consumption growth over the past three years at 2,7%, 3,4% and probably something above 3% this year, compared with a gross domestic product growth rate of about 3% a year over the same period.

The predictability of the growth rate means that all SAB plants have been undergoing periodic expansions to keep up, so beer drinkers can breathe a sigh of relief -- there is no danger of a beer shortfall over the Christmas period.

The challenge for SAB is providing not only the correct quantity required, but also the right brands and bottle types, at the right places, at the right time over this period.

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