Medvedgrad, Croatia’s oldest craft brewery has to expand and are looking for investment for that and to improve their brewery in general, not just technically. They’ve been experimenting more and more these last years, with pretty good success, won Croatian brewery of the year on RB Best at least a couple of times, and they are pretty great people to boot really. https://www.ratebeer.com/brewers/pivovara-medvedgrad/2124/
So, they are selling shares, and instead of swag or something, one gets:
*"Regular dividend payment starting from the business year 2018 (between 6% and 13%) with 13% minimal after the year 2022. The exact terms will be revealed in the investment proposal phase.
The majority shareholder has the right to purchase back syndicate stake at the minimum 150% price (the exact terms will be revealed in the investment proposal phase).
Sounds interesting. Nice to see they’ve already met their goal.
As a beer drinker and non-travelling non-Croatian person, I am interested to know if they will export to more countries as I don’t recall ever seeing Medvedgrad here in the UK. They say their beer is available in 8 countries and that exports will triple, but don’t say if any new countries will receive their beers or if they will just increase the amount they intend to export to the existing ones. Also, export to countries with much larger craft beer markets (the UK especially) seems like it could be quite lucrative.
As a potential investor, it seems like a solid investment to make at first glance if their claims are true about them being able to meet only 85% of current demand at the current facility. The increased demand for their beer is already evident. The increase in bottle sales is consistent and promising too. I would have liked to see more details on their market share in Croatia though and how that’s fluctuated over the last few years. They were best Croatian brewer in 2014 and 2015 but not 2016, so are they falling behind now?
They mention having 30% share of the market and don’t seem too concerned about any of their competitors, which they neglect to name. One of them is surely The Garden who already have an arguably better international presence. Not sure who the other would be (Zmajska is the only other one I know who exports over here sometimes)?
I’ve seen so many breweries doing crowdfunders over the past couple of years but I think this is the first time I’ve ever seen one offer dividend payments as opposed to free beers and/or other benefits like permanent discounts or other swag.
But it’s not a great time of year to be making investments with Christmas so close and the fact I’ve already overspent on beers this month
They export to Canada actually, at least to one place I know of. They’ve done it at least one. Unsure where else, but surrounding countries are not out of the question. Will ask actually. The thing with export is that they are very much popular among the crowd here, non beer geeks too, and they have a pretty wide distribution throughout the country, including major supermarket chains. They, as a craft brewery are, at least with their year-round lager range, “everywhere”. So I’d assume that they will use most of the new capacity for exports.
They do pretty good hoppy lages, and several other styles. They aren’t falling behind really, but others are basically raising the bar with experimental stuff more quickly I guess, and small-batch production of other quality breweries nets those breweries more beers with high scores. Medvedgrad has, IMO, improved in quality since then. They have a lot of very good to excellent beers for the market, but no outright spectacular ones if you understand what I mean. The demand should definitely be what they say with their reputation and distribution.
Your guesses are the same as mine as for the “competitors”, but IMO, they aren’t really. You do hear minor squabbling about some random places and stuff and here and there someone from some brewery will be an ass while approaching pubs, but the scene so far is very much friendly still, and nobody is on nobody’s throat. It’s not fully developed yet.
And understood. I’d get one just to get one, but with my state of finances being literally non-existent, I’ll take a pass this time.
Interesting that they export to Canada. I assumed it would be limited to neighbouring countries purely for cost reasons.
I know what you mean about their beers and how a competing brewery doing good but very small batch releases can get higher average scores may skew comparisons a bit. It sounds like they’re consistent though which is always good.
Yeah I only used “competitors” because that’s the word used in these scenarios and contexts but I get that in most cases breweries are all on friendly terms with one another, no negativity implied! Still, I’d love to see stats/graphs showing Croatian craft breweries market share increases over the years. BrewDog include a slightly related graph in their prospectus showing theirs and other huge craft brewers annual growth rate over the past few years to illustrate how much quicker they’re growing than others, something similar would be nice here especially for potential investors like myself who aren’t at all familiar with the Croatian market.
The fact they do both trad and craft styles should mean they’re generally going to be a safe bet for investment as they appeal outside the craft market too, and being available in supermarkets is a huge plus. Should there be a decline in craft beer buying (unlikely) they will probably be fine as they can just ramp up the trad beers production instead. They sound like the Croatian equivalent of the likes of Thornbridge or Fuller’s in this respect.
I must say I haven’t bothered making an account on Funderbeam yet (unfamiliar with them as a platform actually) so I can’t see all the financial documents and such, it’s possible the graphs and stuff I just talked about are already available. Might check it out in more detail on the weekend.
Well, to one place that I helped them arrange exports to a long ago. At least they did.
I guess that yeah, they provide all the info if you sign up, first time I saw the platform too. Was supposed to go to the presentation of this yesterday, didn’t due to illness, might have known more otherwise.
They can be compared to breweries like that in this context, sure.
