Flat beer

Despite the softening of the overall beer market, craft brewers have every reason to be jubilant. Last year, craft beer volumes grew by 7.2 percent in hl and 10.3 percent in dollars over 2008.

The 1,500 or so U.S. craft brewers produced an estimated 10.6 million hl beer, which gave them a market share of 4.3 percent by volume and 6.9 percent by dollars according to figures published by the Brewers’ Association.

Overall, U.S. beer sales were down 2.2 percent in 2009. The imported beer category suffered most: sales were down 9.8 percent in 2009, equating to a loss of 3.3 million hl.

In the fourth quarter 2009, Grupo Modelo, the brewer of Corona Extra, reported a 4 percent drop in export volumes from a year earlier. The U.S. is Corona Extra’s major export market.

It has been argued that Mexican migrants may have been partly responsible for the drop in Mexican import volumes. Many Mexicans who had found work in building and landscaping during the boom years lost their jobs in the recession, as did those who worked in other industries, including restaurants and manufacturing. Before the recession, there were 12 million Mexicans living in the U.S., about half of them illegally. An estimated 22 percent worked in construction. Come the economic downturn, as many as one to three million Mexicans may have headed back south, thus causing the decline in imported beer consumption.