Leading U.S. brewer Anheuser-Busch has announced that it will build a brewery in Foshan of south China's Guangdong Province, in an attempt to double sales of its Budweiser beer in the next five years.

China's beer market grew nearly 15 percent last year, the third consecutive year of double-digit growth.

"China's beer market has great potential for development, and building a brewery in south China could help improve the productivity of Budweiser and lower the cost," said Cheng Yeren, managing director of Greater China of Anheuser-Busch's Asian branch.

Scheduled for completion in late 2008, the brewery will cover 249,000 square meters and cost 63 million U.S. dollars. It will have a production capacity of 260 million liters.

In 1995, Anheuser-Busch established its first brewing facility in Wuhan, capital city of central China's Hubei Province. The brewery has since quadrupled its original capacity to 420 million liters.

With Budweiser the world's largest-selling beer, Anheuser-Buschalso holds a 27-percent stake in China's biggest brewery group Tsingtao and acquired the Harbin Brewery Group in 2004. Its investment in China has exceeded 1.8 billion U.S. dollars.