IANS

Kolkata, Feb 15: The Vijay Mallya-led United Breweries (UB) is expecting its beer sales to grow by 20 percent next fiscal, a senior company official said here Monday.

"We have a target to sell 100 million cases of beer in the current fiscal (2009-10), which is a 20 percent growth from last year (2008-09). We expect to register a similar sales growth next year (2010-11) also," Senior Vice President Marketing Samar S. Sheikhawat said at a press meet.

He was here to launch new beer brand Kingfisher Blue.

The company sold 83 million cases in last fiscal (2008-09).

"We have been growing at a much faster rate than the industry growth rate of about 14 percent," Sheikhawat said.

The total market size of beer in India is around 190 million cases.

UB plans to launch three-four beer brands, of mild and strong varieties, during 2010-11.

"We plan to relaunch Heineken under our fold in the third quarter of next financial year and also Cannon and Tiger during the year," Sheikawat said.

Heineken NV had bought 37.5 percent stake in UB a year back through acquisition of UK-based Scottish and Newcastle Plc.

Talking about possibilities of raising prices, he said: "We are evaluating options across brands... But nothing has been decided yet. Input prices of ingredients like sugar and glass have gone up in the recent times."