EU: 2019 beer production surpasses 34 bln litres

Last year, over 34 billion litres of beer containing alcohol were produced in the EU, according to Eurostat’s latest production statistics released earlier this week. The EU’s beer production was equivalent to around 77 litres per inhabitant.

In addition, in 2019 the EU produced 1.4 billion litres of beer which contained less than 0.5% alcohol or had no alcohol content at all.

Among the EU-27 Member States, Germany was the top producer in 2019 with a production of 8.0 billion litres (or 23% of the EU total production). In other words, about one in every four beers containing alcohol produced in the EU originated from Germany.

Germany was followed by Poland and Spain (each 3.9 bn litres produced, or 11%), the Netherlands (2.5 bln litres, or 7%), Belgium (2.4 bln litres, or 7%; 2017 data), France (2.0 bln litres, or 6%), the Czech Republic (1.9 bln litres, or 6%).

Compared with 2018, Lithuania recorded the largest increase in the production of beer containing alcohol (+7%), followed by Spain (+6%) and Italy (+5%).

In contrast, the production of beer in the Netherlands fell by 9%, in Latvia by 7% and in Slovakia by 6%.

The Netherlands exported 1.9 bn litres of beer containing alcohol in 2019. This made it the largest beer exporter of all EU Member States, ahead of Belgium (1.7 bln litres) and Germany (1.6 bln litres), followed by the Czech Republic, France and Ireland (all 0.5 bln).

The main destinations for beer exports to non-EU countries were the United States (911 million litres, 22%) and the United Kingdom (825 million litres, 20%). They were followed by China (364 million litres, 9%), Russia (258 million litres, 6%), Canada (193 million litres, 5%), South Korea (184 million litres, 4%), South Africa (108 million tonnes, 3%), Switzerland (98 million litres, 2%), Australia (92 million litres, 2%) and Taiwan (86 million litres, 2%).

The internal market for beers containing alcohol that are not produced in the EU is marginal. However, when importing from non-EU countries, Member States favoured British (278 million litres, or 47% of all extra-EU imports of beer in 2019) and Mexican beer (125 million litres, 21%), ahead of Serbian beer (61 million litres, 10%), Belarusian beer (33 million litres, 6%), US beer (19 million litres, 3%), Ukrainian beer (15 million litres, 2%), Chinese beer (13 million litres, 2%) and Russian beer (9 million litres, 2%).

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