2023-07-30 03:30:21
What a clever name that of the “Frigidaire”! In the early 1960s, not many bars in Libreville offered air conditioning and cold beer. One evening, among the customers who had come to escape the humidity of the Gulf of Guinea, there was Pierre Castel, a Frenchman who sells entry-level wines imported by bulk carrier from his native Bordeaux. He’s around 35, average height, thick black eyebrow.
A young man approaches him, introducing himself as secretary to the presidency and inviting him the next day to the palace. The merchant goes to the meeting, without really knowing if this Albert-Bernard Bongo – who will later become president – is close to the head of state or a margoulin. But it is indeed the President of Gabon who receives him. Léon Mba is annoyed to depend on neighboring Cameroon to supply his country with beer. “Set up a brewery, we will support you », does he challenge Pierre Castel, who told the anecdote in a rare interview with the Monde in 2013. A total novice, the Frenchman started in exchange for a piece of land.
At the Frigidaire began the construction of a beer empire which, sixty years later, has accumulated 5 billion euros in turnover and claims 40,000 employees in some twenty African countries. The wine branch, which has survived, is much smaller but nevertheless considerable: with 1 billion euros in announced revenues, it ranks number one in France and number two in Europe thanks to its Baron de Lestac brands (an anagram of Castel), Malesan or Listel.
Pierre Castel, 96, tenth French fortune according to the magazine Challenges (with 13.5 billion euros in 2022), is obviously not African. But his name is much better known on the continent than in France. The weight of its breweries is significant in many economies, especially French-speaking ones, sometimes as the first taxpayer (Central Africa, Chad) or first employer (Central Africa again, Burkina Faso).
Its positions can be extremely dominant, even monopolistic. Popular in the “maquis” of Abidjan, these open-air eateries, its Bock alone totals 60% of the Ivorian beer market, according to the company. Same picture with the Simba in the « I was » of Lubumbashi or the Pils in the “foufou-bars” from Lome.
“I was hungry and ambitious”
Jesus Sebastian Castel (according to civil status) is of Spanish origin (Pierre is his baptismal name). The story goes that his very modest parents immigrated to France to work as vineyard workers in Bordeaux, where he was born in October 1926, the sixth of nine siblings. The children help with the vines after school. “I was hungry and ambitious. I didn’t want to push the wheelbarrow all my life,” he told Challenges.
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