Dan Fisher: Yes Mike let me, this is all North America related I’m assuming, so I’ll start there. Let’s just talk about the categories, because we’re spending an awful lot of time on the domestic beer category, which is which is down and I believe we’re at a trough so it will recover from this point and it’s consistent with all of the customer commentary within that space. But domestic beer is down 4.5% last 12 weeks, which is a further versus 52 weeks down, nearly 3%. So there’s an acceleration of the decline obviously because of the marketing issue, but import beer is up 11% , non-alcoholic beer is up 27% cider is up 8% S&B is up 15%, ready to drink cocktails are up 41%. As we’ve seen the evolution of our customers transition to beverage companies, because they’re going to be forced to put stuff on the shelf that sells.
We’ve only experienced this phenomenon here for the past 12 weeks and there’s a lot that is going to be repositioned and given we participate with everyone in the market, we should win with whatever’s going to win in the market. At what percentage? It’s a great question. We don’t know, but the trough that we’re experiencing now in the second quarter the third quarter will improve we should benefit from that in the first half of 2024 I would expect continued benefit throughout that first half of the year. But there’s a lot of t questions. but I’m confident that these are customers understand their world real well and they know that they need to be putting stuff on the shelf that’s going to sell and folks will find a home. Nothing’s going to change candidly from that import beer number.
The Hispanic population continues to grow. They already have all gut plans to lean into that to add more capacity. So there’s an ability for those folks to accelerate. And obviously we’re very close to them. So I’m encouraged. From today moving forward I’m encouraged what’s going to show up in the first half of 2024 and beyond.
Mike Roxland: Got that. Thank you for the color. And then just one quick question I think you recently restarted production Avital [ph] and Venus, George. And so wondering, I think that plan was taken down due to the weak macro and also because you lost a customer contract. So wondering is you need to bring them up and restart the plant because of your anticipation of better Brazil demand. Did you win new business? Just wondering why you’ve went up and restart. And I think that was done within the last month or so?
Dan Fisher: Yes. We’re bringing it up for the other customers in that market that are winning and we anticipate that they will win further and take further share as a result of the one brewer who filed for bankruptcy at the tail end of Q1, that’s one issue. But we’re not bringing that hands up for the customer that we originally built it for.
Mike Roxland: Got it. Very clear. Good luck for second half.
Dan Fisher: Thanks very much.
Operator: Thank you. Our next question is from the line of Arun Viswanathan with RBC Capital Markets. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Arun Viswanathan: Yes, thanks for taking my question. I guess I just wanted to ask a little bit more on two things. So first off, when you look into the back half of the year and in the next year, you do have relatively easier comps for next year, already down to mid-single digits on the volume side and high single digits for North America. So would that allow you to get back into the, say, that low single digit range for next year’s volume growth? And are there any other capacity considerations we should consider when thinking about how your volumes evolve and maybe settle into that low single digit range?
Dan Fisher: Thanks for the question. As we sit here today, we haven’t spent a whole lot of time on 2024, I think for both Europe and South America, given they’re growing, we continue to believe that growth will persist. So the question mark will obviously be North America, but as I stated several times in this call, I think Q2 and Q3 we’re at a trough. So we should see improved volumes over these periods. I believe that will be enough to push us into growth territory. So the aggregate position and the answer to your question is yes, I believe we will be in that low single digit growth for 2024. We’ve also stated several times that the capacity we’ve put in place over the last two to three years is enough to grow into at that range.
And so, we should see nice lift in terms of profitability and performance without having to spend additional growth capital. We’ve spent the growth capital we need and I don’t anticipate much in the beverage business over the next two years from a growth CapEx standpoint.
