China's Snow now world's second-biggest beer brand

LONDON, Nov 6 (Reuters) - Chinese beer Snow is the world's second-biggest beer brand by volume, moving up to separate two Anheuser-Busch (BUD.N) brands, Bud Light and Budweiser, figures from researcher Plato Logic showed on Thursday.

Snow is brewed by SABMiller (SAB.L) and its Chinese partner China Resources Enterprises Ltd (0291.HK), and has grown rapidly as China overtook the United States earlier this decade to become the biggest beer market in the world.

Plato lists the top ten beer brands as Bud Light, Snow, Budweiser, InBev's INTB.BR Brazilian beer Skol, Modelo's (GMODELOC.MX) Corona, Heineken (HEIN.AS), another Brazilian InBev brand Brahma, Coors Light (TAP.N), SABMiller's Miller Lite and China's Tsingtao (0168.HK)

The researcher added the world's five biggest beer markets were China, United States, Russia, Brazil and Germany.

It also forecast that world beer consumption will grow by less than 3 percent in 2008, after the 5.6 percent growth seen in 2007. (Reporting by David Jones; editing by Simon Jessop)