Per capita beer consumption has dropped to record low
A rainy summer and an ageing population dragged Germany’s per capita beer consumption down to a record low of 112.5 litres in 2007, the Brewers’ Association reported in December.
As many observers have said for more than a decade, there will be no improvement in the years ahead. Germany’s 1200 brewers will just have to get used to a long-term decline in beer consumption.
The 2007 figure was 3.5 litres down on that for 2006, which was boosted by Germany hosting the Football world championship and a super summer.
Prospects for 2008 look grim. With all the federal non-smoking regulations in pubs implemented and another beer price hike scheduled for March, brewers are bracing themselves for yet another difficult year.
Publicans in several German Länder (the federal states) have already had a taste of things to come. After the introduction of the ban on smoking, which was done in true German federal fashion on a state-by-state basis with differing degrees of severity (ahem), many of the so-called “one-room pubs” have seen their turnover drop significantly. These pubs have fared worst, as they cannot send smokers into a separate room where smoking is still permitted.
Others, which do have a separate room for smokers, have still suffered badly. According to a recent survey, 43 percent of publicans in Lower Saxony and Baden-Württemberg have seen the numbers of punters go down markedly. Only 6 percent of publicans said that the non-smoking legislation has provided them with additional business.
The battle over the ban on non-smoking is getting more and more heated and political. To everybody’ surprise, the Bavarian government took the ban on smoking one step further and outlawed smoking even in those pubs which have a separate room. This has angered publicans and “Stammtischbrüder”, the regulars, no end and political observers expect the majority-ruling conservative Bavarian government to receive a heavy beating over this issue in the upcoming local elections in March and the Bavarian parliamentary elections in September.
The tobacco industry and the brewing industry have refrained from publicly opposing the ban on smoking – for obvious reasons. So it is the publicans themselves who have organised a protest. With the help of Germany’s former Minister for Defence, Rupert Scholz, they plan to submit a complaint to the Constitutional Court, arguing that the non-smoking law puts one-room pubs at an unfair disadvantage.
The publicans’ association was quick to point out that this complaint is not to question the ban on smoking as such. All they want to achieve is a change in the law to allow one-room publicans to decide whether they want to be a non-smokers’ or a smokers’ pub as in Portugal and Spain.
In the weeks to come, as brewing companies will host their annual press conferences, figures will be released as to the effect of the ban on smoking on brewers’ volumes. When asked, Radeberger Group which is Germany’s number one brewer, recently admitted that in those Länder where the ban on smoking has already been implemented, sales of draught beer have declined in two-digit figures. Draught beer volumes in Germany are believed to be 19 percent of total beer sales.
