This week, Heineken, who is a leader in the non-alcoholic beer space, as well as the most international beer brand in the world, has announced that they have halted investments and exports to Russia, due to the war in Ukraine.
Heineken NV has published the following press release in regards to their decision:
We are shocked and deeply saddened to watch the war in Ukraine continue to unfold and intensify.
We earlier announced that HEINEKEN stopped new investments and exports to Russia, ended the production, sale and advertising of the Heineken® brand, and announced that we will not accept any net financial benefits or profit from our business in Russia.
Following the previously announced strategic review of our operations, we have concluded that HEINEKEN’s ownership of the business in Russia is no longer sustainable nor viable in the current environment. As a result, we have decided to leave Russia.
We aim for an orderly transfer of our business to a new owner in full compliance with international and local laws. To ensure the ongoing safety and wellbeing of our employees and to minimise the risk of nationalisation, we concluded that it is essential that we continue with the recently reduced operations during this transition period.Â
In all circumstances we guarantee the salaries of our 1,800 employees will be paid to the end of 2022 and will do our utmost to safeguard their future employment.
We will not profit from any transfer of ownership and we expect an impairment and other non-cash exceptional charges of approximately €0.4 billion in total.
Upon completion of the transfer HEINEKEN will no longer have a presence in Russia.
We continue to hope that a path to a peaceful outcome emerges in the near term.
Heineken is a market-leader in the non-alcoholic beer space. Their NA beer, Heineken 0.0 was the first ever non-alcoholic beer to appear in a national commercial, which happened to be during the 2023 Super Bowl.
Little is known about whether or not they have restored operations in Russia since this announcement.
