Graham Mackay, who anticipated the global consolidation of the beer industry and helped transform his South African brewing company into SABMiller, the world’s second-largest behind Anheuser-Busch InBev, died on Wednesday in Hampshire, England. He was 64.

The cause was a brain tumor, the company said in a statement.

Mr. Mackay was a rising executive at what was then called South African Breweries when Nelson Mandela was released from prison in 1990. Until then, South African Breweries had dominated the country’s beer market, but expanding internationally was impossible because of sanctions imposed on the country’s apartheid government.

Those sanctions were lifted on Mr. Mandela’s release, and as apartheid ended the company began looking overseas. Europe did not look promising, nor did the United States, since both were dominated by powerful companies like Guinness, Heineken, Anheuser-Busch and Miller.

So Mr. Mackay, who was appointed chief operating executive in 1994, looked elsewhere. He started in Eastern Europe, where the fall of the Berlin Wall permitted the company to purchase beer companies in Central and Eastern Europe.