THE BURIED STORY
Despite being competitors,
San Miguel gives URC
a spirited leg up
The San Miguel Group has helped competing conglomerate Universal Robina launch a new product line, something unthinkable when the Sorianos were still running the food and beverage empire.
Mainstream media widely reported about the Gokongwei-controlled URC launching early this week its own alcoholic seltzer line, its first foray into the growing, multibillion spiked-spirit market.
Called Chill, its three variants are all "canned" in San Fernando, Pampanga by - here's what the news failed to report - the San Miguel Yamamura Packaging Corp., the joint venture of the San Miguel Group with Japan's Nihon Yamamura glass and container conglomerate.
In other words, San Miguel is, to use a 19th-century manufacturing term, the bottler of Chill, in much the same way that San Miguel had been the bottler of Coca-Cola before the US multinational conglomerate decided to build and manage its own bottling plants in the country.
The bottling/canning arrangement between URC and SMC becomes even more unusual in that SMC also has its own line of alcoholic sparkling-water, San Miguel Hard Seltzer.
Launched only two months ago, San Miguel Hard Seltzer like the new Chill is "naturally fruit-flavored sparkling water with an alcohol content of 5 percent."
Like Chill, San Mig's alcopop also stresses its "low calories, zero sugar ('0 artificial sweetener' but 19 grams of sugar, in the case of Chill), and no preservatives" qualities to reach its diet-conscious demographics.
But whereas San Mig Hard Seltzer offers only one variant, orange with dalandan, URC's Chill comes in three flavors - lemon lime, red apple, and lychee - presumably giving the San Miguel canning subsidiary even more business.
This time, though, the Gokongweis are not resorting to their usual price-cutting strategy to gain market share. The "suggested" retail price of Chill is P51 a can, higher than the P50/can of San Mig Hard Seltzer.
In addition to the spiked sparkling water category, URC and SMC have competing products in coffee, tea, chicken, pork, and animal feeds.
And like other local conglomerates, both are also into banking, power generation, hospitality, property, and media businesses.
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