Page 11 - Bulletin 21

8

The great rivalries

In the late 1890s there was a rivalry between four well-known and well-established

companies, two were breweries competing for the promotion of their beers, and the other two
were shipping companies competing for dominance in the conveyance of passengers and mail

from the United Kingdom to South Africa. These two rivalries resulted in the building and/or
upgrading of a number of premier hotels in Cape Town.

The Beer Rivalry (1899 – 1956): Ohlssons Cape Breweries’ (OCB) and Lion Lager vs
South African Breweries’ (SAB) and Castle Lager.

OCB was headed by the dynamic entrepreneur Anders Ohlsson. (Fig 1.5.) He was born in
1841 in Christiania (now Oslo), Norway of Swedish parents and arrived at the Cape in 1864.

In 1888 he leased Mariendal Brewery and the Josephine Mill from fellow-Swede Jacob
Letterstedt with an option to buy. Letterstedt employed a number of skilled Swedish brewers,

and his Letterstedt beer won a silver medal in 1885 for bottled ale at an International
Competition in Port Elizabeth.

This Swedish affiliation between Letterstedt and Ohlsson may well have influenced both
parties for the lease included an option to buy all hotels which Letterstedt owned and which

sold Letterstedt beers. Ohlsson took up the option within a year and OCB was registered in
1889. After the final stocks of Letterstedt beer were sold the brand name was changed to Lion

Beer.

Each hotel now acquired by OCB was leased to the proprietor with the specific condition:

Ohlssons Cape Breweries are to supply all beers which are to be sold at a fair and
reasonable price.

Plans for OCB hotels, either new or the redesign of existing ones, included large bars, many
with billiard-rooms and some with additional beer-parlours. These facilities and the