Copenhagen — Strong growth in China for Carlsberg helped dilute the negative effects of currencies and lower volumes in the Russian market, allowing the Danish brewer to stick to its annual profit forecast. Sales in the first quarter fell 5% to 12.70-billion Danish krone ($2.06bn), below the 12.89-billion krone forecast in a Reuters poll of analysts. However, it still expects mid single-digit organic growth in operating profit in 2018. Carlsberg, the world’s third-largest brewer behind Anheuser Busch InBev and Heineken, continued to lose market share in Russia, where its Baltika brand accounts for about a fifth of sales. Russian initiatives to discourage drinking have included banning the sale of beer in PET bottles, popular plastic bottles larger than 1.5 litres, which has hurt sales in Carlsberg’s biggest market. "Our volumes grew in all markets except for Russia," CE Cees t’Hart said. Losing ground to rivals The decline in volumes in Russia reflected an overall market decline of ...
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