Tonga's beer drinkers were thirstier during 2004 than they were in 2003, drinking 1.2 million litres of Royal Beer, 400,000 litres more than last year's figure of 800,000 litres.

To make sure that there will always be beer for thirsty Tongans, John Sullivan, the General Manager, said that in November they had doubled the volume of their production by installing two new stainless steel insulated and refrigerated Uni Tanks, with the capacity of holding 13,000 litres. He said that the capacity of their old production outfit, which consisted of six fermentation tanks and one maturation tank was only 6,500 lites.

After brewing the beer is transferred to the uni tanks were the processes of fermentation and the 10 days maturation of the beer are taking place in the two tanks. "Fermentation, simply is the process where by sugar is converted to ethyl alcohol by yeast, and maturation is the process where by the beer is matured."

John said that the Royal Beer's share of the local beer market had increase during the past ten years from 48% to 82%.

John said that the imported beer market had been an existing sector of the beer market with a different price structure and generally was more expensive. He did not think that an increasing number of imported beers would have a devastating affect on the Royal Beer's share of the local beer market.