After the flour cartel, the coffee cartel, the chocolate cartel, the potato cartel and now the beer cartel, it’s kind of hard to dispel the impression that the German food industry is a hotbed for illegal activities and that it’s only thanks to the Cartel Office’s prying eyes and severe crackdowns that unsuspecting consumers aren’t screwed by big and cunning corporations.

Retailers’ mind-sets never fail to baffle. Viz Russia. Why several of the country’s leading retail groups decided to sell their private label (PL) beers in these controversial big plastic bottles is beyond me. Why not offer PL beers at both ends of the price range as the British retailer Tesco does with its “Tesco Finest” and “Tesco Everyday Value” ranges?

Poor spring weather in Europe led to weak second-quarter revenue, Heineken said on 22 August 2013. The brewer predicted that earnings this year won’t grow as consumers curb spending.

So is this the end of the BRIC era? That’s a question global brewers’ strategy departments will have to find an answer to. What is certain is: Brazil’s, Russia’s, India’s and China’s growth rates are slowing. This is not the beginning of a bust. But the "Great Deceleration", as The Economist quipped at the end of July 2013, will be having its effect on beer consumption.

How daft is this? Why would Germany's major brewers risk being fined for cartel shenanigans and price fixing while they put good money into retailers' grubby hands so that they can sell even more of their beers on super-saver offers? Why indeed?

That’s bad. That’s truly bad. Because of this year’s inordinately long winter and a spring that wasn’t, German brewers sold 4.9 percent less beer during the first six months, compared with the same period last year, the German Federal Statistical Office (Destatis) reported on 31 July 2013.

It’s a start. The UK’s number one brewer Heineken has unveiled plans to pump more than GBP 13 million (EUR 15 million/USD 20 million) into refurbishing some of its bars. The brewer’s Star Pubs & Bars unit, formerly the Scottish & Newcastle Pub Company, has spent GBP 700,000 over the past three months in Scotland alone and has a further GBP 603,000 earmarked for refits in Edinburgh, Glasgow and Inverness in the coming weeks, Scottish media reported in early August 2013.

The three major Brazilian shareholders of AB-InBev have already paid down their debt which they took on to finance the acquisition of Anheuser-Busch in 2008, the Belgian magazine “Trends” reported on 31 July 2013.

The British Beer & Pub Association (BBPA) reported on 26 July 2013 that pub beer sales were down by 5.8 percent in the second quarter of 2013. Volumes in supermarkets fell 3.6 percent, the lowest second quarter fall since 2005. Overall beer volumes across both channels dropped 4.8 percent.

A sure way to find out that you are getting on in age is perusing the annual Barth Report for Germany’s ranking in global beer output. In 2000 Germany ranked third behind the U.S. and China. By 2012 it had dropped to fifth rank among the 40 largest beer producing countries, behind China, the U.S., Brazil and Russia, with a beer output of nearly 95 million hl.