Beer sales up for the first time in ten years
A silver lining? A decade of decline in UK beer sales has come to an end, with a 1.3 percent rise in UK beer sales in 2014, the British Beer & Pub Association (BBPA) announced on 30 January 2015. Beer sales in pubs have begun to stabilise, showing a small decline of 0.8 percent in 2014, but this was the smallest decline in sales since 1996. Off-premise sales grew by 3.5 percent, matching the growth of last year, and taking off-licence and supermarket sales above on-premise sales, for the first time on record.
According to the BBPA, the rise in 2014 followed nine consecutive years of decline, which saw beer sales slide by 24 percent.
The BBPA says that huge tax rises were the major culprit, with a devastating beer duty hike of 42 percent from 2008 to 2013, under the disastrous beer tax ’escalator’ policy. This sent the duty (plus the VAT on the duty) from GBP 0.42, to GBP 0.65 (USD 0.98) on a typical pint. The period saw 7,000 pubs close, or about two dozen per week, with 58,000 jobs lost.
The BBPA thinks that the turnaround in the fortunes of beer follows two historic cuts in beer duty by the Chancellor and calls for a much-needed hat-trick of beer duty cuts in the Budget on 18 March 2015.
BBPA Chief Executive Brigid Simmonds commented: “British beer is back in growth – and we want to keep it that way. But with seventy percent of pub drink sales being beer, the picture for our much loved pubs is still fragile. That is why another duty cut from the Chancellor is vital. It will build on the success of two very popular tax cuts in the past two years, and boost jobs in an industry that employs 900,000 people, almost half of whom are 16-24 year olds. That has got to be good news.”
