Why STAR Lager Beer is quickly disappearing in Nigeria’s crowded beer market
I’m no beer drinker but I have noticed that STAR Lager Beer has lost its dominance in the Nigerian beer market and is fast being crowded out. If you’re in doubt, you’ll see why shortly. STAR is Nigeria’s first beer launched by Nigerian Breweries in 1949. STAR enjoyed the spotlight for two decades. In 1970 Nigerian Breweries introduced its second beer, Gulder Lager beer, and it wasn’t until the mid-70’s and early 80’s that other breweries began to spring up and produce their own local beers to compete with Nigerian Breweries. But Nigerian Breweries had always had a strong head start; about thirty years of having the entire market to itself and the wealth of experience it had access to from its partnership with Heineken. Heineken’s romance with Nigerian Breweries is as old as Nigerian Breweries itself. This began in 1946 when United Africa Company of Nigeria (UAC) and Heineken signed a contract to incorporate Nigerian Breweries. Heineken eventually took over Nigerian Breweries in year 2000, making it a subsidiary of the Heineken Group of companies.
After Heineken’s takeover, STAR and Gulder still enjoyed dominance in the Nigerian beer market, smoothly riding through the early 2000’s. Nigerian Breweries was the largest breweries in the country and as such they had the resources to flood the market with their brands. STAR and Gulder enjoyed so much brand love from Nigerians especially from the early 2000’s with the introduction of a number TV reality shows and brand experiences for their customers through initiatives that included: STAR Mega Jam, STAR Trek the Music, STAR Quest, and Gulder Ultimate search. But between 2010 to 2016, they were all ended by Nigerian Breweries, and it was just about from this time, 2016, that STAR and Gulder began to lose their dominance in the beer market. So what happened exactly? As a brand enthusiast, and knowing how strong the two brands previously were I got curious and decided to do some brand detective stuff. From my findings, there are 3 logical factors why Nigeria’s top 2 beer brands especially STAR, suddenly began to creep away. Here we go!
1. A crazy expansion project
Between 2011 and 2015, Nigerian Breweries added 23 new brands to their brand portfolio. Before 2011, Nigerian Breweries had just seven brands which were: STAR, Gulder, Heineken, Legend Extra Stout, Maltina, Amstel Malta, and Fayrouz. Having seven brands between 1946 and 2010 (64 years) and then adding 23 in four years — expansions don’t get crazier than this. The expansion involved the acquisition of already existing local breweries including: Sona Breweries, Champion Brewery, Consolidated Breweries, and Life Breweries. These acquired breweries had their own original brands which now became Nigerian Breweries’ brands. Obviously the newly acquired brands were going to be promoted. This meant that it would become Nigerian Breweries’ main project and all other previously prioritized projects would have to become secondary — it’s only logical and makes absolute business sense. Of course it also meant that the STAR brand was going to get reduced attention and the bulk of investments would now be going to promote these new brands. And it was evident. The STAR Mega Jam, STAR Trek the Music, and STAR Quest projects were doing the STAR brand a lot of good, and really endeared STAR in the hearts of young Nigerians especially. Unfortunately, these dearly loved projects became the first casualties of the crazy expansion project.
The acquisitions welcomed already existing beer brands: 33 Export, Life Lager, and Goldberg which weren’t as popular and readily available in the market as STAR was because the brewers weren’t as large as Nigerian Breweries and as such didn’t have the resources to promote them like STAR.
2. External Competition
The rebranding and promotion of 33 Export, Life Lager, and Goldberg proved to be successful and Nigerians really took to them. They became competition for STAR even though they were now under the same brewery. STAR was losing the spotlight gradually. Stern competition also came from outside the Nigerian Breweries family. Other international breweries like SABMiller, and AB InBev began to enter the Nigerian beer market and started acquiring some other local breweries that weren’t large enough to compete with Nigerian Breweries. This created a more level playing ground. Already existing beer brands like Trophy had a fighting chance now. Hero beer came onto the scene as well and enjoyed massive acceptance especially in the Southeast. The beer market that was flooded with two major beers: STAR and Gulder suddenly became very crowded in the space of five years. It was practically game on!
3. Quality & Ranking
From the first two reasons it’s quite clear that competition had multiplied for STAR both from within and externally. But that is not the most worrying part. The most worrying part is that it was becoming clearer that people preferred 33 Export, Life, and Goldberg to STAR. A research carried out by a research company in 2020 revealed that STAR is not in the top 10 beers people would recommend to someone to drink. From its Nigerian Breweries-Heineken family, Life, Champion beer, and Heineken itself make the top 10. Checking several other beer rankings as well, STAR still fails to make the top 10. This clearly shows that with the increased options and other beer brands now readily available as STAR used to be, people prefer these other brands over STAR. What can only be deduced from this is that STAR isn’t a quality beer as much as we thought.
For STAR it would be tough to fight its way back up a now very crowded and highly competitive beer market. It’s even tougher because it no longer has the independence and prioritization it used to when Nigerian Breweries had majority ownership. Now under the ownership of Heineken, it’s tougher for STAR to negotiate any form of prioritization or preference.
