D.B. also will raise price of beer

Press, 3 January 1985, Page 2

D.B. also will raise price of beer

Dominion Breweries will raise the price of its beer an average 7 per cent from midnight on Sunday. The price of a litre jug of beer in a public bar will rise 10c to 15c. A quart bottle will cost about 7c more. The company’s general manager, development, Mr Kevin Treacy, said yesterday that Dominion Breweries was recovering the cost of malting, fuel and canning increases. It was also spending millions of dollars modernising its breweries. The firm had been restrained in its price increases, Mr Treacy said.

The rise was well below the rate of inflation and would not recoup all the cost increases faced in the last 12 months. Canned beer also had risen about 6c a can, in late November because of an increase in the price of tinplate.

Lion Breweries raised its beer prices an average of 7 per cent from January 1.

The company blamed recent cost increases including rail freight charges up 15 per cent, can costs up 16 per cent, and malt up $34 a tonne. The increase was lower than the rise in

the consumer price index since June, the company said.

Lion said it deliberately had refrained from taking a justified increase at Budget time, and again before Christmas when can prices increased. The new prices would help Lion’s expansion and improvement programme which had been put aside in recent years because of increasing taxes and low profitability. Early in the new year Lion would begin spending about $7O million in a 10year modernisation programme. .