Beer sales down again - exports doing better

02-Feb-2022 - Germany

German breweries once again brewed and sold less beer last year. This was reported on Tuesday by the Federal Statistical Office. 8.5 billion liters represented a 2.2 percent drop in sales compared with the previous year and marked the lowest volume since the statistics were introduced. Since the revision of the beer tax in 1993, the amount of beer has thus decreased by 23.9 percent.

As the main reason for the further decline after the already very weak year 2020, the brewing industry had already cited last week the catering restrictions due to the pandemic. According to statistics, losses were particularly high in the lockdown months of January and February 2021, especially since normal operations had still prevailed in the comparable months of 2020. After that, beer sales recovered, the federal agency said.

A bright spot for brewers was the export business, which rose by 4 percent to 1.6 billion liters and is becoming increasingly important for the companies. Mixed beer beverages also increased. German beer was in greater demand than in the previous year, especially in countries outside the EU. Here, sales climbed by 12.7 percent to 817.3 million liters. By contrast, 4 percent less beer was exported to EU countries than in 2020.

According to the Brewers' Association, the smaller breweries in particular are struggling with the slump in sales because they are more dependent on draft beer sales in the catering trade or at events. Numerous companies have also announced price increases.

Looking at sales does not reflect the actual extent of the crisis, said Brauerbund CEO Holger Eichele in Berlin. "The sales losses will clearly exceed the sales minus, because for breweries the value added in the gastronomy and at events is much higher than in the trade." It is becoming an existential threat for many businesses, he said, that the historic slump in sales on the beer market is being met by an unprecedented price explosion among suppliers.

"Brewing beer is more expensive than ever before," explained Veltins CEO Michael Huber. Last year, he said, the company had had to cope with market-related or politically induced cost increases in almost all procurement areas. However, Huber was encouraged by the fact that the keg beer business would quickly pick up again when the barriers to accessing the catering trade fell./ceb/DP/eas (dpa)

Note: This article has been translated using a computer system without human intervention. LUMITOS offers these automatic translations to present a wider range of current news. Since this article has been translated with automatic translation, it is possible that it contains errors in vocabulary, syntax or grammar. The original article in German can be found here.

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