By James Atkinson
Draught beer is "sacrosanct" and you won't see Carlton & United Breweries develop a product that enables consumers to emulate it home, according to CUB sales director – on-premise Paul Donaldson.
Responding to news of the upcoming launch of Lion's controversial draught beer at home product, Tap King, Donaldson told TheShout CUB had a similar concept presented to it about three years ago.
"We had a number of suppliers come to us to try and launch it based around Carlton Draught, given it's the most popular draught beer in the country," he said.
"After we spoke to the AHA and about 20 or 30 publicans, we decided against it."
Donaldson said CUB's view that draught beer is sacrosanct has been heightened under SABMiller's ownership.
"It's just too important to put mixed messages in the market," he said.
"We don't have any plans to re-evaluate it at the moment, in fact the opposite is true – [our approach is] about how do we put more resources into on-premise?"
"That's what The Beer Collective is, as an example – how do you make on-premise special and different, rather than the opposite," Donaldson said.