German breweries increase production by 2.2 pct in 2018

Source: Xinhua | 2019-04-19

German breweries increased their output by 2.2 percent in 2018, an increase of 184 million liters, to 8.7 billion liters not including non-alcoholic beer, the Federal Statistical Office (Destatis) announced on Thursday.
The increase was attributed to factors such as long, hot summer and the 2018 FIFA World Cup, according to Destatis.
Despite a 3.5 percent increase in prices, beer sales for German brewers rose as well.
The number of breweries in Germany rose year-on-year by 39 to a total of 1,539. The largest proportion, 42 percent, were located in Bavaria, south Germany, where about 2.4 billion liters of beer was brewed.
"Currently there are already more than 6,500 different beer brands in Germany, at least one new beer is introduced to the market every week," Holger Eichele, managing director of the German brewer's association (DBB) told Xinhua on Thursday.
The DBB is expecting that the market share of non-alcoholic beers will grow from currently seven to ten percent within a few years. At the moment, there are about 500 different non-alcoholic brands in Germany.
German beer exports remained almost unchanged compared to the previous year. In 2018, 1.6 billion liters of beer worth 1.2 billion euros (1.36 billion U.S. dollars) were exported, a rise of just 0.1 percent.
While exports to EU countries have been declining, the export volume to the outside of the EU has grown rapidly from 300 million liters in 2008 to almost 700 million liters in 2018. "The Asian market, in particular, has become significantly more important for Germany's brewers," Eichele said.