Manila, Jan. 2 - San Miguel Corp, Southeast Asia's largest food and drinks group, said on Wednesday it had completed the sale of brewer James Boag to Australia's Lion Nathan Ltd for A$325 million ($286 million).
San Miguel's sale of Boag to Australia's second-largest brewer, comes as it aims to push into heavy industry, such as power, mining, infrastructure and real estate, to drive growth after dominating the home market for beer, liquor, dairy products, processed food and poultry for decades.
"We are reassessing our priorities and reshaping our portfolio to include new businesses that we feel will give us higher margin growth in the near and medium term," San Miguel President Ramon Ang said in a statement to the Philippine Stock Exchange.
"Proceeds from this and other previously announced divestitures could be used for a number of alternatives like San Miguel's entry into new business."
The sale of Boag, announced in November, coincided with San Miguel's move to divest itself of Australian dairy and juice manufacturer National Foods. San Miguel's partner Japanese brewer Kirin Holdings has said it will buy National Foods for $2.6 billion.
Kirin also owns 46 percent of Lion Nathan. The latter's acquisition of Boag will increase its share of the Australian beer market to 44.5 percent from 42 percent.
Boag, based on the island state of Tasmania, had sales of A$92 million in the 2006 fiscal year.
"While Boag is an excellent business with strong brands, San Miguel is in a process of redefining itself and injecting into our operations a higher-return-on-investment focused discipline," Ang said.
Last year, San Miguel, through its energy unit San Miguel Energy, lost bids for a majority stake in geothermal power producer PNOC-Energy Development Corp and a multi-billion dollar licence to run the Philippine power grid.
San Miguel's B shares, which are open to all, closed 0.84 percent down on Wednesday at 59 pesos in a broader market that was down 0.12 percent.