2024-02-02 14:36:24
At the Oktoberfest held in Munich, Germany every fall, visitors drink beer while wearing traditional German costumes called ‘Lederhosen’. /Oktoberfest official website
Last year’s beer sales in Germany, a ‘beer powerhouse’ with more than 1,500 breweries, hit an all-time low in 30 years since statistics began in 1993. According to the German Federal Statistical Office on the 1st, beer sales in Germany last year amounted to 8.38 billion liters, down 4.5% from a year ago. This figure is the sum of domestic sales and overseas exports. Additionally, non-alcoholic beer and beer with an alcohol content of less than 0.5% were excluded from the tally.
Since 1994, when sales reached an all-time high (11.56 billion liters), beer sales in Germany have generally continued to decline. It has decreased for three consecutive years since 2019 and reached an all-time low of 853,000 liters in 2021. It increased by 2.7% in 2022 due to the lifting of corona blockade measures, but hit an all-time low last year.
Due to the supply slump caused by the prolonged war between Ukraine and Russia, the prices of beer raw materials such as wheat and barley, as well as empty bottle prices, have risen. Domestic sales volume decreased by 4.2% compared to a year ago as people closed their wallets due to high prices and economic recession. The local beer industry believes that the increase in non-alcoholic beer sales has also had an impact as the culture of refraining from drinking has spread over a long period of time in line with the trend of emphasizing health care. Overseas exports also decreased by 5.9% in one year due to global high prices and decreased consumption. Sales of mixed drinks such as beer, lemonade, cola, and fruit juice amounted to 400 million liters last year, down nearly 10% from a year ago.
The German brewing industry, which has prided itself on being the ‘home of beer,’ is in a state of emergency. Instead, non-alcoholic beer, which has recently emerged as a new beer consumption trend, is considered the ‘last hope’. In Germany, the market share of non-alcoholic beer reaches 7%. “Non-alcoholic beer will soon account for one-tenth of the beer made in Germany,” Holger Eichele, head of the German Brewery Association, told the daily Die Welt. “No other sector of the beer industry has grown this much in the past 10 years.”
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