GROWING sales toasted Tsingtao Brewery Co's profit by 27.73 percent in 2007 from a year earlier, the country's second biggest beer maker said yesterday.

Its net income hit 558 million yuan(US$80.87 million), or 0.427 yuan a share, last year and its revenue grew 15.86 percent to 13.71 billion yuan under domestic accounting standards, the brewer, based in Shandong Province, said in a statement to the Shanghai Stock Exchange yesterday.

Meanwhile, its operation costs rose 13.9 percent to 7.87 billion yuan because of the increased sales and rising prices of materials.

Investment plan

The brewer, 27 percent owned by Anheuser-Busch, sold 5.05 million kiloliters of beer in 2007, an 11-percent jump from a year earlier. It said it expects sales to grow 13 percent to 5.7 million kiloliters this year, according to the statement.

It plans to invest 2.27 billion yuan in new plants and potential acquisitions this year, of which 1.5 billion yuan will be raised by issuing bonds with detachable warrants.

The brewer said in earlier reports that it would boost its production capacity of more than one million tons by building new plants in Shandong, Sichuan and Shaanxi provinces this year.