USA: US breweries shipments decline by 0.8% despite strong finish to 2019
Despite a strong finish to 2019, U.S. brewers shipped nearly 1.4 million fewer barrels of beer in 2019 compared to 2018, according to the Beer Institute (BI), which cited unofficial estimates of domestic tax paid shipments from the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau (TTB).
For the full year, U.S. breweries shipped and estimated 165,499,000 barrels of beer, a decline of 0.8% from 2018, when shipments totaled 166,879,555 barrels.
Nevertheless, December marked the strongest month of shipments in 2019, as shipments increased 4.7% compared to 2018.
In the final month of 2019, beer companies shipped about 13.6 million barrels of beer, but it wasnt enough to make up for seven months of declines in 2019, including steep declines in June (-5.1%) and August (-6.4%).
The first estimates of 2020 are slated to be released on February 27.
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