China's Tsingtao to buy brewery stake from Carlsberg

SHANGHAI: China's biggest beer maker Tsingtao Brewery said Wednesday it would own a Shanghai brewery outright after agreeing to buy the 25 percent stake in the firm held by Denmark's Carlsberg. The deal will cost the Qingdao-based company 51.3 million yuan (7.5 million dollars) in cash and give it ownership of the Shanghai firm, according to a Tsingtao statement filed to the Shanghai Stock Exchange.

Tsingtao said the purchase would help to better manage the operation of the brewery, which posted a net income of 16.8 million yuan last year, up 30 percent from a year earlier, the statement said. Tsingtao Brewery, which had a 13 percent market share in China's beer sector last year, is the country's oldest and most famous beer maker.

It was established 105 years ago as a German-British enterprise in what was then the German treaty port of Qingdao. China overtook the United States as the world's top beer producer in 2002. Foreign brewers such as Carlsberg and US-based Budweiser all have invested heavily in operations around China.