The Czech Republic: Beer output up 4.7% last year

Czech beer production and consumption is rising again. Czech breweries produced a record 21.3 million hectolitres of beer last year, an increase of 4.7 percent over the previous year. Beer output had dropped in 2017, prague.tv reported on April 10.

The increase was mainly due to beer for export, where production rose 11.8 percent year-on-year, according to the Czech Brewery and Malt Association (ČSPS).

The popularity of 11 and 12 % alc. vol. lagers continued to grow and now represents the majority of domestic beer market. But Czechs are also increasingly buying beer in bottles or cans, rather than going to a pub.

“In total, we exported 5.2 million hectolitres of beer abroad, which is the first time ever past the 5 million mark,” ČSPS executive director Martina Ferencová said.

Czech beer is mainly exported to other European Union countries. The main markets are Germany and Slovakia. Czech beer is becoming increasingly popular in Hungary, where beer exports were 60 percent more compared to the previous year.

Exports outside the EU also grew, representing a quarter of total exports last year. Russia is the largest non-EU export market, and it received 375,000 hectolitres, or 54 percent more than in 2017.

Domestic consumption grew by almost 3 percentage points last year, meaning every Czech drank 141 litres of beer on average. This was some 3 litres more than a year earlier. Sales of packaged beer rose 2 percent to reach 64 percent of the market.

Bottled beer had a 40 percent share, thus increasing by one percent, barrel beer had a share of 34 percent (a decline of 2 percent). Beer consumption in cans increased by more than a quarter last year, reaching 11 percent. Consumption of beer in plastic bottles was at 12 percent, a drop of 4 percent. Sales of tank beer dropped by 1 percent to 3 percent of the market.

“The continued shift in consumption from pubs to households is bad news. It does not benefit our beer culture or the Czech economy,” ČSPS chairman František Šámal said.

In addition to six large brewing companies, there are 29 independent breweries and 440 microbreweries in the Czech Republic.

Beer is also imported into the Czech Republic. Imports, mainly from EU countries, have been growing over the past five years. Some 291,000 hectolitres of beer were imported into the Czech Republic in 2014, and that rose to was 395,000 hectolitres last year.

Imports came mostly from Poland, Hungary, and Belgium.

Some 8,000 hectolitres came from outside the EU, mainly from Mexico, Serbia, and Thailand.

Czechs have long held the title of the biggest beer drinkers in the world. A survey by Japanese brewer Kirin has the Czech Republic on top ever since it became an independent country. In the most recent survey, Namibia came in second, followed by Austria, Germany and Poland.

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