East African Breweries Limited (EABL) has refuted claims of playing dirty campaign tricks against start-up African Originals.
This comes after African Originals, popular for its brand ‘Kenya Originals (KO)’ alleged that the listed brewer was behind the regulatory hurdles it has been facing, which threaten to push it out of the market in the country.
African Originals accused the brewer of replicating some of its goods and funding social media smear campaigns by influencers who claim to have encountered health difficulties after ingesting African Originals products.
Moreover, it accused its employees of misrepresenting African Originals items and encouraged supermarket employees not to display them.
“EABL strongly refutes these malicious claims as they are false, defamatory and lack any evidence. We do not condone such behaviour within our business by any of our third-party partners or employees,” stated the brewer.
The listed brewer further noted that it is committed to ethical business practices and embraces fair competition in the market.
“For clarity, EABL has no connection to African Originals products or their quality issues. These attempts to link EABL to these issues are baseless and cannot be authenticated, EABL is formally requesting African Originals retract their false allegations,” EABL added.
“EABL will vigorously defend its position and take all necessary steps to protect its reputation and the trust of our customers, consumers, and all other stakeholders.”
In 2019, EABL was involved in a bottle dispute with Naivasha-based brewer Keroche Breweries, with the latter charging it for utilizing unethical measures to maintain its monopoly in the country’s beer sector. It faced the senate in 2020 and disputed the claims by Keroche.
EABL is the region’s largest brewer and the third-largest firm on the Nairobi Securities Exchange (NSE) in terms of market capitalisation.
For the half-year period ended December 31, 2023, its profit shrunk 22 per cent to Ksh6.8 billion on macroeconomic-driven cost inflation and rising finance costs.
Further, the Nairobi Securities Exchange (NSE)-listed brewer noted that the devaluation of the local currency resulted in a forex loss of Ksh2.3 billion, a Ksh2.1 billion jump compared to what it recorded in a similar period a year prior.