The Carlsberg Group is a Danish brewing company it was founded in 1847 by Jacob Christian Jacobsen mostly known as J.C. Jacobsen. He established his first brewery on a hill outside of Copenhagen. J.C. Jacobsen then, decides to name the brewery after his son Carl and on the bjerg (hill) on which the brewery was built on. Due this innovation, Carlsberg played such a big part of Copenhagen’s history. In 1868, Carlsberg began exporting to other neighboring countries in Eastern Europe. The first barrel of Carlsberg was exported to a grocer in Edinburgh, Scotland. Within that year, the lager became very popular in Scotland and other countries such as India, Singapore, and Hong Kong.
Jumping forward a hundreds years, in 1970 Carlsberg and another renowned Danish brewer merge together called Tuborg. Together the breweries developed their business with exporting, licensing agreements, and breweries outside of Denmark. To further their growing export Carlsberg and Tuborg combined under one name becoming the United Brewery’s. This combination has enabled their unique lager for global export as well as continental styles for both domestic and foreign markets. During that profitable time, one of the most important markets to the United Breweries was Great Britain. The United Brewery’s two main brands were at one’s disposal in essentially every European country. Moving into the 1990’s, export sales were declining both on Eastern and Western Europe, yet Carlsberg achieved modest but still maintained a steady growth in sales.
In 2001, Carlsberg and Norwegian Orkla ASA’s merge, forming a new joint venture to regain there position as one of the strongest brewers brands in the world. Carlsberg mainly concentrated in the Northern and Western parts of Europe. Subsequently, Carlsberg breweries became the leading brewery in the Nordic area. In 2004, Carlsberg A/S owned 40% of Orkla shares, which they eventually bought out Orkla of the merger. In 2007, Carlsberg acquired full ownership of Baltic Beverages Holdings (BBH). The Baltic Beverages Holdings is an industry that manufactures in brewing, producing, and distributing branded beers. Since, BBH operates as a subsidiary for Carlsberg Breweries this ownership gave Carlsberg the possibility of strengthens its position in Europe. As the fifth largest brewing company in the world Carlsberg A/S’s has a portfolio of 75 breweries around the world.