Carlsberg beer drought hits Lilongwe townships
As the weekend draws closer, the capital city Lilongwe has not just been hit by water shortages in Chilinde, Area 23, Area 22 and Kaliyeka, but it has also been hit by an acute Carlsberg beer shortages.
A snap survey around beer places in the areas proved the chief missing brand is Special Brew, followed by Stout with Green appearing here and there. Efforts to talk to Carlsberg Bottlers spokes official, Towera Pilling, proved futile.
At Simaya the fridges were almost empty, with just one small and about five giant Green bottles up for sale. A tender at the joint said they could not get stock around their usual Southern Bottlers stocked depot in Area 23 and Chilinde.
“We have been up and down searching for beer but it is scarce and we are tired. Go anywhere and the situation will be the same,” said an employee at Simaya.
Neighbouring Kalibu Entertainment Centre remained closed, probably due to the same problem.
The same scenario was at Chilinde where only one pub had just a dozen Special Brew bottles for sale at an exorbitant price of MK300 a bottle, sending imbibers driving around the city in search of Malawi’s high alcohol content specialty.
Area 22’s Zero Degrees and other bottle-stores also recorded poor stocks of the alcoholic beverages.
It was however a different story around Mchesi, where most of the bottle-stores did not have Special but Sun Set had a big stock of the brand where it was up for grabs at MK200 a bottle, similar to all other Carlsberg brands on sale.
Reports indicated Areas 25 and 36, Likuni, and other places were experiencing the same problem, raising fears prices would continue to go up.
Last month Special Brew was again scarce and an official at the production company said this was due to a break down at the production line at the main offices at Makata, Blantyre
Nyasa Times was informed by a source working at the company that a filler was breaking bottles.
“However, we are getting around it,” he said.
The Carlsberg Group in Malawi was officially opened on 14th December 1968, and Carlsberg Malawi Brewery Limited (CMBL) was the first Carlsberg brewery outside Denmark.
Located in the heavy industry area of Makata, it is the only state-of-the-art brewing and beer packaging facility in Malawi with the capacity to producing 380,000 hl and more of beer per year.
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