China: Beer consumption annual growth around 7.5%

The world’s largest producer of beer is China, which has more than 600 breweries and some 2,000 companies linked to the brewing industry. The United States is ranked second. Germany comes in third, followed by Brazil, Russia and Japan. China’s beer market is over ten times bigger even than Australia’s. It is true, tea is China’s most popular drink, but beer is second, Salt Lake City Weekly posted August 03.

What’s more, the Chinese aren’t just producing more beer - they’re also drinking it. Downing around 24 billion liters of brew last year, Chinese beer consumption was up a whopping 5 percent, as opposed to an increase in beer sales in the United States of only about 1.5 percent.

The average annual growth in beer consumption for China in recent years has been around 7.5 percent. Individually, Chinese citizens don’t drink all that much beer - about 19 liters per person, compared to 75 liters for the average European. But of course, the population of China is so huge that they could drink 80 percent less beer per person and still come out on top in terms of overall beer consumption and sales.

Surprisingly, the overall Chinese beer market is not dominated by mega-producers like Tsingtao, Yanjing, Jinxing, Chongqing and Xuehua. The beer industry in China is mostly characterized by geographic loyalty and an affinity among the people for local brands - kind of like the French and their wines. These companies are typically owned by foreign-funded enterprises or provincial, local municipal and township governments. So in China, there are few truly national beer brands and local brewers tend to dominate their regions.

China’s two biggest beer producers - Tsingtao and Yanjing - still only represent about 20 percent of Chinese beer production. In United States Anheuser-Busch alone accounts for half of all beer consumed. On the other hand, the biggest beer producers in China export their product worldwide. Tsingtao, for example, ships to more than 50 different countries.

Tsingtao is China’s biggest and oldest brewery. The brewery was built by German settlers in Qindao, in the province of Shandong, in 1903, and now accounts for more than 50 percent of the beer that China exports. Since coming to the United States in 1972, Tsingtao has been the top-selling Chinese beer in this country.

E-malt.com, the global information source for the brewing and malting industry professionals. The bi-weekly E-malt.com Newsletters feature latest industry news, statistics in graphs and tables, world barley and malt prices, and other relevant information. Click here to get full access to E-malt.com. If you are a Castle Malting client, you can get free access to E-malt.com website and publications. Contact us for more information at marketing@castlemalting.com .