Royal Swinkels Family Brewers is a family brewers company in North Brabant, the Netherlands. In their country, the business has become the oldest and one of the most popular brewers’ companies.
They have 8 breweries and dozens of beer brands and energy drinks introduced to more than 130 nations.
One of the most well-known products in the Dutch market, belonging to Royal Swinkels, is Landerbräu beer.
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The meaning of “Landerbräu” is “Beer of the country”. This beer represents the 300-year brewing culture of the Royal Swinkels Family Brewers Family.
Some product lines provided by this brand: Imported Landerbräu Beer: Landerbräu Premium Beer, Landerbräu Weissbier Beer, Landerbräu Radler Beer, Landerbräu Strong Beer, and Landerbräu Super Strong Beer.
And Royal Swinkels Family wanted to share the premium beer with Asian markets, including Vietnam.
To have an efficient and fast export process, Royal Swinkels cooperated with VIEC to enter the market.
An Overview of the Vietnamese Beer Market
Drinking alcohol has been a cultural beauty of Vietnamese people for ages. Beer is an iconic and well-known beverage in Vietnam.
The alcohol culture makes Vietnam one of the most attractive beer markets globally.
As the result, Vietnam has the highest beer consumption in Southeast Asia, and the third in Asia.
In fact, the Vietnamese beer consumption is more than 4 billion litres/ year, and imported beer output (more than 37 litres/ year) in 2019 is impressive.
And the number is forecasted to increase.
With the working-age population accounting for 68%, and the developing living standards, Vietnam has become a potential beverage market, especially the beer market.
And the Netherlands is one of the biggest beer exporters to Vietnam. The country holds 44% of the market share in the Vietnamese imported beer industry, along sides with other foreign players.
Our customer challenges
Competitors’ landscape
Despite Royal Swinkels Family being a big corporation, the company still has to face challenges in the industry, when bringing Landerbräu to Vietnam.
Competitor is one of the large obstacles when it comes to the Vietnamese market.
Some giant brands in the Vietnamese beer market having such outstanding market share are Sabeco (39.6%), Heineken (33.5%), Habeco (10.9%), and Carlsberg Vietnam (6.9%).
In terms of imported beer, besides the Netherlands, there are also the top beer suppliers in Vietnam that come from Mexico, Thailand, and Belgium.
Low brand awareness
Although Landerbräu is a famous brand in the Netherlands and Europe.
Landerbräu was still a new brand to Vietnamese consumers. With such a competitive market, it has no market share and no brands in Vietnam.
Limited Exporting Finance
Despite being a big organization, Royal Swinkels planned to spend a small part of its budget to enter the Vietnamese market.
And nowadays, when people receive a large amount of information every day, marketing campaigns are more important than ever.
Our company has to deal with the brands to meet an agreement about expanding the brand in the Vietnamese beer market.
It was a difficult start for the brand and VIEC to improve the awareness of customers of this alcoholic beverage.
Tax and Vietnamese government’s restriction
Beer is the subject taxed in Vietnam.
Importing and domestic consumption are two stages of taxing alcoholic beverages, which include several taxes such as import tax (0-8%), value-added tax (10%), and special consumption tax (65%).
Fortunately, the tariff barriers gradually reduced thanks to the commitments in Free Trade Agreements and the integration trend.
This tax reduction creates such chances for foreign players in the beer market.
Another obstacle for the beer market is the regulations.
In 2020, the Vietnamese government enacted a decree that the marketing and advertising of beers needed stricter control (according to the Decree 100/2019 / ND-CP – December 30, 2019).
Our Approach
Realizing the difficulties, we conducted the necessary steps to support Royal Swinkels in exporting its beer products to Vietnam.
First, VIEC needs to work with Royal Swinkels to understand more about the products.
After a few meetings with the team, we discover some interesting unique selling points of Landerbräu Premium Beer:
It is the bottom fermentation method that makes the Landerbräu members popular with customers.
This exceptional method creates a distinctive, delicious flavour, pure yellow beer mixed with slightly yeast-flavoured grains and sweet fruit.
This step will later show our consumers the advantages of Landerbräu compared to other products on the market.
The next step is finding that Landerbräu Beer’s value proposition was vital in our strategies.
Then we carefully tested the market to answer the question: “Will Vietnamese customers accept Landerbräu Premium Beer?”
Thanks to our exclusive connection in Vietnam, our partner – Royal Swinkels didn’t have to spend so much time and resources evaluating the market or finding customers’ insight.
During the working period, VIEC always accompanies Royal and updates the latest market trend and Vietnamese customers’ insights for them.
After a few months, good results came to us. Vietnamese consumers have welcomed Landerbräu Beer during the market test period
When we receive a good signal from the market, the next step VIEC did is introduced Landerbräu to beverage importers and distributors in Vietnam.
The result
After 3 months of pushing sales, and hard-working from the whole team.
The cooperation of VIEC and Royal Swinkels has brought victory to Landerbräu Beer products. VIEC has successfully connected Royal Swinkels to one of the biggest importers in Vietnam – to import Landerbräu Beer.
And soon, it became well-known to Vietnamese alcoholic drinkers and has received huge profits in the Vietnamese market.
Up to now, Landerbrau Premium Beer is available in many premium beer stores in Vietnam, where people love to try high-quality foreign beer brands.
