Cervecería Bavaria

The German brothers Leo Siegfried and Emil Kopp came to Colombia in 1876; in 1889 they bought land for a brewery in Bogotá, and Bavaria Kopp’s Deutsche Bierbrauerei opened there in 1891. Bavaria grew by merger: with Medellín’s Cervecería Continental in 1930, and in 1967 with the Barranquilla brewery that made Águila, a Caribbean-coast beer of 1913. From the 1980s it bought into breweries in Ecuador, Panama, Peru and Bolivia. SABMiller took it over in 2005 and AB InBev in 2016. Bavaria brews in six plants and holds more than 90% of the Colombian market. In June 2026 the competition authority opened proceedings over whether it had broken commitments on exclusive deals with shops and bars.