Asahi Group

Asahi Group Holdings, Ltd., together with its subsidiaries, manufactures and sells alcoholic beverages, soft drinks, and food products in Japan and internationally. It operates through Alcohol Beverages, Soft Drinks, Food, Overseas, and Others segments. The company offers alcoholic beverage products, including imported beers, non-alcohol beer taste beverages, wines, shochu and whiskey products, ready-to-drink beverages, happoshu products, and spirits. It also provides soft drink beverages, such as ciders, carbonated soda water beverages, coffee, tea, lactic acid drinks, mineral waters, sports drinks, and fruit juices. In addition, the company offers food products comprising confectioneries, health foods, supplements, yeast extracts, powdered milk products for infants and baby foods, skin care, and others; and freeze-dried foods, including miso and other soups, porridge, risotto, stews, bowls, pastas, and curries. It provides its products primarily under the Asahi Super Dry, Clear Asahi, Black Nikka, Asahi Dry Zero, Mitsuya Cider, Wilkinson, Wonda, Asahi Juroku-cha, Asahi Oishii Mizu, Calpis, Mintia, Dear-Natura, Peroni Nastro Azzurro, Pilsner Urquell, Cool Ridge, Schweppes, Asahi Gokujo Kire Aji, Wilkinson Highball, Asahi THE RICH, Prime Rich, Zeitaku Shibori, Style Free, Zeitaku Zero, Asahi Off, HATARAKU ATAMANI, WAKODO GLOBAL, Juhinmoku no Ippai, Carlton, Great Northern, Pirate Life, Lech Free, Kozel, Ksiazece, Captain Jack, Zubr, Tyskie, and Ippon Manzoku Bar brands. Further, it is involved in the operation of restaurants; and offers fertilizers, and microbiological and biochemical products. The company was formerly known as Asahi Breweries, Ltd. and changed its name to Asahi Group Holdings, Ltd. in July 2011. Asahi Group Holdings, Ltd. was founded in 1889 and is headquartered in Tokyo, Japan.

Asahi was founded in Osaka in 1889 as the Osaka Beer Company . During World War I, German prisoners worked in the brewery.In 1990, Asahi acquired a 19.9% stake in Australian brewery giant Elders IXL which has since become the Foster's Group, later sold to SABMiller.

In 2009, Asahi acquired the Australian beverages unit Schweppes Australia, now known as Asahi Beverages.

In early 2009, Asahi acquired 19.9% of Tsingtao Brewery from Anheuser-Busch InBev for $667 million. The sale made Asahi Breweries, Ltd. the second largest shareholder in Tsingtao behind only the Tsingtao Brewery Group.In July 2011, Asahi acquired New Zealand juice maker Charlie's and the water and juice divisions of Australian beverage company P&N Beverages.In August 2011, Asahi acquired New Zealand's Independent Liquor, maker of Vodka Cruiser and other alcoholic beverages, for ¥97.6 billion.In May 2013 its New Zealand operations expanded with the purchase of retail chain Mill Liquorsave. Also, Asahi acquired the Australian brands and assets of Cricketers Arms and Mountain Goat Brewery in 2013 and 2015, respectively.The first of these transactions happened as a result of Anheuser-Busch InBev agreeing in April 2016 to sell its Dutch business Grolsch Brewery, Italian business Peroni Brewery and the UK's craft Meantime Brewery and SABMiller Brands UK to Asahi; this €2.3 billion deal closed on 12 October 2016. After Inbev's acquisition of SABMiller in October 2016, InBev agreed to sell the former SABMiller Ltd.'s Eastern European businesses and relevant assets in Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary and Romania to Asahi for US $7.3 billion. The deal closed on 21 December 2016 and included beer brands such as Pilsner Urquell, Velkopopovický Kozel, Tyskie, Lech, Dreher and Ursus.In 2017, the company sold its 19.9% stake of Tsingtao Brewery for $937 million.In 2019, the company bought Fuller's beer business from Fuller, Smith & Turner plc for an enterprise value of £250 million. The assets sold comprised the entirety of Fuller's beer, cider and soft drinks brewing and production, wine wholesaling, as well as the distribution thereof and also includes the Griffin Brewery, Cornish Orchards, Dark Star Brewing and Nectar Imports In May 2020, the Australian Foreign Investment Review Board approved the company's $16 billion bid for Carlton & United Breweries, and the deal will see Asahi ending up with about 48.5 per cent share of the Australian beer market.

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