According to the German Brewers’ Association, the price of beer will probably continue to rise. This was announced by Managing Director Hans Eichele. A brewery boss even fears prices of 7.50 euros for half a liter of beer by the end of the year. A beer summit with Chancellor Olaf Scholz is being discussed.
The German Brewers’ Association has prepared consumers for further increases in beer prices. The reason is the persistently high cost pressure for the breweries, explained general manager Holger Eichele on Tuesday in Berlin.
In addition to the energy supply, the companies are burdened by the sharp rise in costs for raw materials and preliminary products as well as for personnel and logistics. Numerous companies have already announced price increases. Overall, after three years of continuous crisis, the industry is much more resilient than before.
The deputy head of the Berlin-Brandenburg brewery association and managing director of the Neuzelle monastery brewery, Stefan Fritsche, is still extremely concerned. “If breweries and restaurateurs pass on their additional costs in full to the consumer, we will be at 7.50 euros for half a liter of beer at the end of this year,” he warns “Bild”.
Eichele takes the same line. “We’ve been working in a permanent crisis mode for almost three years now,” he complains. Because the Ukraine war and energy crisis followed after the corona pandemic, everything became more expensive, from energy to crown caps and beer green ingredients such as hops and brewing malt to beer barrels, crates and new glass.
Fritsche even has another fear: “Many customers don’t go along with it anymore. Many breweries are threatened with extinction!” Fritsche fears that breweries will die out across the board and says that the industry is “facing the greatest challenge in German brewing history”.
He even wants to involve politicians to prevent this: “We need the beer summit in the Chancellery so that Germany’s most important cultural asset does not die out!” The agriculture ministers and economics ministers from the federal states should also take part. “The art of brewing is a piece of Germany,” says Fritsche. Otherwise only large group breweries remained.
According to Eichele, there are signs of a slight recovery in beer sales. With 81.2 million hectoliters of beer, the volume in the first eleven months of 2022 increased by 3.2 percent compared to the same period last year. In the last year before Corona, 2019, the comparative value was still 85.2 million hectoliters. The beer sales figures for 2022 as a whole will be published by the Federal Statistical Office at the beginning of February.
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