By James Atkinson
The market will be disappointed if Coca-Cola Amatil gets back into beer with anything less than a top tier brand, according to Carlton & United Breweries (CUB) boss Ari Mervis.
In an interview with TheShout, Mervis reserved a dig for CCA, when asked about his future competitor's likely launch portfolio, which is set to be revealed in the coming months.
"One will anticipate it will be one of the very large beers that's currently available in Australia, because there's been a lot of noise and hype," he said.
"I think everyone will probably be a bit disappointed if it's a 'B' brand or something that's a lot smaller or less exciting."
Mervis said it would make little difference to CUB if Coca-Cola Amatil was to wrestle Corona or Heineken away from Lion, as has been anticipated.
"All of the brands that we sell are our own brands and we've got perpetual licences to them," he said.
"If they took it away from our competitor it would just basically fragment the portfolio, it wouldn't necessarily have a big impact on us."
See Wednesday's edition of TheShout for the second half of our interview with Ari Mervis.