World: World beer production up 0.5% in 2019

After five years of receding output volume, there was a slight year-on-year increase in world beer production of 9.1 mln hl, or 0.5 %, to 1.913 bln hl in 2019, the Barth Haas Group reports.

Only 39 of the 172 beer-brewing countries saw their output decline, while 66 countries reported growth.

The five leading beer-producing countries are still China, the USA, Brazil, Mexico and Germany. More than half of world beer volume is brewed in these five countries.

In Europe, output remained stable. While Spain saw output rise by 1.2 mln hl, Germany and Poland suffered declines of 2 mln hl and 1.1 mln hl, respectively.

Growth in the Americas was once again substantially driven by the Central and South American countries of Mexico (+4.4 mln hl) and Brazil (+3.4 mln hl). In the USA and Venezuela, on the other hand, output fell by 3.6 mln hl and 1.6 mln hl, respectively.

Although China reported a further decline of 4.7 mln hl and Japan brewed 1.1 mln hl less beer, production in Asia as a whole nevertheless increased by 6.8 mln hl. The main contributors to this growth were Cambodia (+5 mln hl), Vietnam (+3 mln hl) and Thailand (+2.4 mln hl).

In Africa, output remained stable thanks to a strong performance by South Africa, with an increase of 1.2 mln hl.