Cider growth has slowed

After several years of impressive growth, cider sales slowed down to grow by just 10.8 percent in 2015, according to Nielsen market research. In 2014, sales increased by 71 percent and in 2013 by 89 percent.

Whether one can say that cider has hit a glass ceiling is debateable, although some of the biggest cider brands in the US, including Angry Orchard, Woodchuck, and Johnny Appleseed, reported significant sales declines in late 2015.

“We obviously saw the [cider] category slowing in growth, but to go negative in fourth quarter was probably something that we had not planned for as a category,” Martin Roper, the CEO of Boston Beer Company, the parent company of Angry Orchard Hard Cider, was quoted as saying in February this year. “I certainly think that we’re probably losing some casual cider drinkers, who tried it and maybe are moving on.”

Boston beer’s Angry Orchard range commands 60 percent of the cider segment and was the company’s largest growth driver from 2012 to 2014.

Undeterred by the data, Heineken is preparing its UK cider brand Strongbow for the conquest of the American market. “We are placing a big bet,” Ronald den Elzen, Heineken USA’s CEO, told U.S. media in April 2016.

According to Heineken, “the apparent end of the cider trend is just the defeat of cider brands that misunderstood what consumers wanted,” says Business Insider.

Heineken became the parent company of Strongbow in 2008, when it bought Scottish & Newcastle. In 2011, the company announced plans to begin selling the brand (previously only available in the UK, China, Malaysia, and Singapore) in the U.S. and other countries around the world.

In the UK, cider accounts for 22 percent of the beer market. In the US, it is just 1 percent — and that’s after five years of explosive growth.