Global beer production could decline

27-Jul-2022 - Germany

World beer production is expected to decline this year. BarthHaas, the world's largest hop specialist based in Nuremberg, is expecting a decline in the order of half a percent to one percent, as Managing Director Peter Hintermeier explained on Monday. However, he stressed that a precise outlook is currently very difficult.

"Like the entire global economy, the brewing industry has been hit hard by the consequences of the Ukraine war," Hintermeier said. Russia and Ukraine brew around five percent of the world's beer production, he said.

Last year, Russia ranked sixth among the world's largest beer producers with 8.2 billion liters, just behind Germany in fifth place, which came in at 8.5 billion liters, according to BarthHaas. The top four beer producers worldwide were China with 36 billion liters, ahead of the U.S. with 20.4 billion, Brazil with 14.3 billion and Mexico with 13.5 billion liters.

In 2021, global beer production had increased by about 4 percent to 186 billion liters. "Fortunately, beer consumption worldwide has by no means collapsed as much as had been forecast," Hintermeier emphasized. There were particularly strong increases in production in China, Brazil, Mexico and the UK, among others. In China, it was the first increase after seven consecutive declines. However, the global pre-Corona level was five billion liters short in 2021.

However, the expected decline in beer production is not due to a lack of hops. Last year, for the third year in succession, significantly more hops were harvested than were needed. However, at least global acreage has recently declined slightly, and the current crop in Europe could be weaker due to the ongoing drought.

However, because farmers generally have long-term supply contracts, this affects them less than the current rising costs, for example for energy and labor, as Hintermeier explains. In addition, supply bottlenecks for fertilizers and crop protection products are weighing on farmers. It can be assumed that around 90 percent of the expected harvest has already been sold.

In Germany, hardly any gas is used in hop production - but it is used in hop processing. The same applies to breweries and bottle producers. Should Russia actually stop gas deliveries to Europe, this would put additional strain on the industry, warns BarthHaas./ruc/DP/jha (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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