World beer market 2011 growth picks up to 2.7 percent: report

A server serves Sapporo draft beer at Sapporo Bier Garten in Sapporo, northern Japan, February 19, 2007.

LONDON (Reuters) - Growth in the world beer market picked up to reach 2.7 percent in 2011 as growth continued to strengthen driven by emerging markets, and is predicted to grow at 2.5 percent this year, industry research group Plato Logic said on Wednesday.

The researcher upgraded its 2011 figure from its 2.5 percent volume growth estimate made back in September 2011 as the recovery in the global beer market gathered pace.

"Overall, the top-line figure for 2011 (provisional) indicates further steady recovery, and represents an improvement on the 1.6 percent growth recorded in 2010 and 0.4 percent recorded in 2009," said Plato director Ian Pressnell in a statement.

For 2011, there was no change in the ranking of the world's four biggest brewers with Anheuser-Busch InBev (ABI.BR) retaining top spot followed by SABMiller (SAB.L), Heineken (HEIN.AS) and then Carlsberg (CARLb.CO), with these big four holding a combined global market share of around 50 percent.

The rest of the top ten brewers in order includes Tsingtao (600600.SS), Beijing Yanjing, Mexico's Modelo (GMODELOC.MX), Molson Coors (TAP.N), Japan's Kirin (2503.T) and Turkish Anadolu

Efes (AEFES.IS).

(Reporting by David Jones; Editing by Jon Loades-Carter)