我要一瓶青岛! -- Tsingtao beer selling well

If anyone has sampled the bland world of Chinese beers you are probably aware that the majority of Chinese beers from all the different regions around China taste oddly similar to one another.

Tsingtao (青岛) however is the one beer that has a good, unique taste and growing brand recognition around the world.

Riding high on the strength of its brand, Tsingtao Brewery Co said "it expects to maintain strong sales growth this year also, despite high raw material prices and intense competition."


Tsingtao is one of the few brewers in China which has been able to adapt and do well in the context of both rising costs and shrinking domestic demand for beer in China.

Profit rose 25.34 percent from a year before to 699 million yuan, on sales of 16 billion yuan, up 16.88 percent. The company said it remains confident for 2009 and said its growth would be 2 percentage points higher than that of the national beer market.

In 2008, the company sold 5.38 million kiloliters of various brews, up 6.6 percent from 2007. The growth rate was 1.2 percentage points higher than the industry average.

Tsingtao's market share increased by 13.24 percent in 2008 from 12.86 percent in 2007 at the expense of its bland competitors.