Carlsberg Breweries and Simonds Farsons Cisk are commemorating 40 years of collaboration with a visit by Carlsberg Brewery officials, Peter Hammarstedt – Managing Director Export & License, Jens Peter Philbert – Vice President – ELUD Western Europe and Sidsel Marie Lyhne – International Commercial Graduate. They were hosted by Chairman of the Farsons Group, Louis A. Farrugia, the Group Chief Executive Officer, Norman Aquilina and members of the senior management team.

Simonds Farsons Cisk successfully concluded discussions to brew Carlsberg in Malta in 1978 and the first locally brewed and bottled Carlsberg was launched on the Maltese market three years later.

Commenting on this historic occasion, Mr Louis A. Farrugia, Farsons Group Chairman, said “We are proud of our longstanding commercial relationship with one of the most prestigious Brewery Groups in the world. Many of the values that Carlsberg professes, Farsons shares and endorses. Throughout the past 40 years, Farsons has been a beneficiary of the immense technical knowledge and know-how that Carlsberg possesses.”

At the end of the visit to Malta, Mr. Peter Hammarstedt from Carlsberg said “It has been truly inspiring to visit Malta, and the Farsons Group. Their dedication to the Carlsberg brand is as strong as ever, and we are impressed by how the Farsons Group is continuing to invest and develop. Great and longstanding business partnerships are of course built on a shared business interest, but more importantly on trust and respect and by sharing core values.”

Although the agreement between Carlsberg Brewery and Simonds Farsons Cisk was signed forty years ago, the first contact between Carlsberg and Farsons started well over 60 years ago.

Carlsberg’s then representative agents in Rome, and exclusive dealers of Carlsberg for Italy, Malta and Libya, asked the Maltese brewers to channel their Danish product into Libya, since Simonds Farsons Cisk had been given the sole concession to supply all the beer to Libya by the government of the day.

At the time, Farsons had strong links with the country, with permanent branches in its most important cities at the time, Tripoli and Benghazi. In order to penetrate part of the North African trade, the Italian agent proposed a Maltese sub-concession of Carlsberg beer to Simonds Farsons Cisk, with part of the imports being shipped to Libya.

Simonds Farsons Cisk grabbed this opportunity and counter-proposed to bottle bulk-imported Carlsberg beer in its new Mriehel brewery, inaugurated only three years earlier. The confirmation came in May 1953, where Carlsberg Brewery’s export department wrote to Simonds Farsons Cisk, stating its intention in granting it exclusive agency.  While stating that it was positively considering the bottling of Carlsberg beer in Malta, it also laid out many rigorous brewing conditions. A formal agreement was signed between the two companies two years later.

The market for this famous beer grew, also thanks to the constant presence of military personnel on the island and frequent visits from ships of the US Sixth Fleet based in the Mediterranean. A 1966 report points out that Carlsberg beer was very popular, and it was being consumed by the American sailors visiting the Maltese shores to the extent that supply could not satisfy the demand.

The Danish brewery continued to strengthen its ties with Farsons when the agreement to brew Carlsberg in Malta was signed in 1978.

Carlsberg Lager beer is available all over Malta and Gozo in bottles, cans and on draught, and is brewed, marketed and distributed by Simonds Farsons Cisk plc.