Sales of Tennent’s lager in Italy have rocketed 57 per cent to 3.6 million litres a year since the Glasgow-based brewery resumed exports to Italy in 2012 following a break of over twenty years.

Under a previous owner, Bass, Tennent’s lager was exported to Italy up to the 1980s but volumes declined and exports eventually dried up altogether under subsequent owners of the brand.

Since Tennent Caledonian Breweries was bought from the Belgian conglomerate Anheuser-Busch InBev by the Dublin-based drinks firm C&C in 2009, Tennent’s response to declining sales of alcoholic drinks in the UK market has been to focus on exports which – at the time of the C&C takeover – were virtually nil.

In the space of six years, that new strategy has seen Tennent’s being exported to 40 countries worldwide, of which 20 are in Europe. Growth has been particularly strong in Spain, US and India, but Italy remains far and away Tennent’s most important export market.

Although Tennent’s is Scotland’s best-selling pale lager, with a domestic market share of around 60 per cent, the Scottish mass-market tipple is regarded in Italy as a sophisticated drink and is increasingly to be seen being sipped by urbane Italians in piazzas throughout the country in preference to local brews such as Peroni, Birra Moretti and Nastro Azzurro.

Andrea Pozzi, Managing Director of C&C International, says that consumers in bars from Rome to Milan regard the Scotland-brewed beer as a “little bit exotic”.

“Scotland and Scottishness is really appealing to Italians,” says Pozzi, who himself hails from Turin, the Piedmontese capital. “Consumers in Italy are very sensitive to the provenance of what they buy and are looking for product authenticity,” he said.

“Particularly when eating a spicy pizza or other hot dishes such as spaghetti Arrabbiata they are finding that this goes well with a glass of lager rather than wine.”

“We are very pleased with this healthy growth in exports to Italy and we expect double-digit growth sales to continue there in the coming years.”

Although Italians drink less beer than the residents of northern Europe, they have a particular penchant for strong beers like Tennent’s Extra which, with its alcohol content of 9.3 per cent, is far stronger than the 4 per cent Tennent’s lager sold in the UK. Even the standard Tennent’s lager destined for the Italian market is, at 5 per cent alcohol, brewed to be slightly stronger than the standard UK version.

The lager is only available in bottles or on draught in Italy, a clear sign that Tennent’s is targeting the premium end of the market. Last year, beers from Tennent’s Wellpark brewery in Glasgow’s East End started being sold in Italian supermarkets for the first time but there are no plans to cheapen the brand by making drinks available in cans.

The company is now eyeing the potentially enormous African market, with Kenya and Tanzania being viewed as the best places to launch.

In the year to February 2015, C&C’s operations in Scotland accounted for €332m (£243m), almost half of the company’s total global turnover of €684m (£501m).