Abstract
To introduce an analysis of the brewery industry, one point must be underlined: the European brewery market is mature, which is essential to understand its trends and its forces. We are now going to use the Porter's model of the Five Forces Analysis to develop this analysis. First of all, consolidation is a key trend in the brewery industry. It has consequences reaching into economies of scale and into the access to supply or distribution channels. Actually, it is more difficult to enter into a market when there are significant leaders, which are able to develop a competitive productivity on the one hand and to pressure supply and distribution channel on the other hand. As the five largest global brewers accounted for 30% of production volume in 2002, we can suppose that there are entry barriers de facto. Even in the UK, the recent independency of the public house chains does not contradict this trend since it forces the brewing firms to be more competitive, which is easier for an existent firm than for a new one.
