Every other day, it seems, one of Germany’s brewing industry leaders issues an apocalyptic statement, saying that with declining beer consumption, many of Germany’s 1.459 breweries will not survive. The latest to engage in this gloom and doom talk is the head of Oettinger, Germany’s major budget beer producer. According to CEO Stefan Blaschak, the brewing industry is facing a wave of bankruptcies in the coming years. “Breweries will be dropping like flies,” he said. In true alarmist mode he predicted that even large ones could be affected.
The reason behind his pessimistic forecast is the steady drop in beer consumption. For the past three decades, beer sales have fallen relatively steadily by two to three percent per year. “This year, however, we are experiencing a landslide,” Mr Blaschak said. “The market has slumped by 7 percent to 7.5 percent. In the first half of 2025 alone, the industry lost around 2.6 million hl beer domestically, which corresponds to about three million cans per day,” he added.
The brewing industry is not alone in sounding the alarm. The wine industry, too, is seeing consumption decline. On average each German buys about 20 litres of wine annually. But only eight litres are domestically produced. That is a problem. So if punters were to buy one extra bottle of German wine each per year, the economic collapse of many local wineries could be prevented, officials say.
Will locals heed their appeals to drink more? That is highly unlikely. Germans have other things to worry about: rising unemployment and a persistent recession aggravated by Mr Trump’s tariff war. And besides, all this moaning and groaning about Germans turning away from booze can also be interpreted as consumer bashing. Because the underlying message reads: “If it were not for your inconsiderate behaviour we would not be in trouble.” Remember: no one likes to be chided for their consumption choices.
On 1 September, the Canadian government removed all tariffs on goods from the US, including alcohol, that are covered by the United States-Mexico-Canada trade agreement (USMCA). The Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said Canada will retain its 25 percent tariffs on steel, aluminium and autos, while his government works with the US to craft a new trade agreement. The current USMCA expires in 2026. Canada and China are the only countries that have retaliated against Trump in his trade war. Canada imposed 25 percent tariffs on a long list of American goods in March, including oranges, alcohol, clothing and shoes, motorcycles and cosmetics.
But American drinks industry leaders remain sceptical about the tangible impacts Canada’s tariff reversal would have without action from provinces to restart the import of American spirits. In February, Canadian provinces put an embargo on American alcohol and removed beer, whiskey and other booze from the shelves of their alcohol shops. So far, only two smaller provinces – Alberta and Saskatchewan – have allowed the return of American spirits.
Lidl devotes half of its Scottish beer shelf to women brewers. The German discount retailer is raising a glass to equality. From Thursday 28th August, the discount retailer has given equal shelf space to Scottish craft beers brewed by women and women-owned breweries across all 112 Lidl stores in Scotland. The line-up will feature some 14 beers by women. As part of the initiative, GBP 0.50 (USD 0.70) from every woman-brewed beer sold will go towards funding the Lidl Scholarship at Heriot-Watt University’s International Centre of Brewing and Distilling. The scholarship will support a woman brewer to qualify at a commercial level – paving the way for the next generation of female leaders in brewing, Lidl said.
More than 200 UK pubs were demolished or repurposed in the first half of 2025. This decline has seen the total number of pubs in England and Wales, including those vacant or available to let, fall to 38,780. Since the beginning of 2020, a staggering 2,283 pubs have permanently disappeared from communities across England and Wales. Industry leaders have described the trend as “heartbreaking”, urging the Treasury to implement supportive tax measures in the upcoming autumn budget, which traditionally is announced in late October, early November. The closures are most likely linked to increases to the national minimum wage, national insurance payments and business rates payments.
A piece of Belgian beer history is disappearing from the shelves: AB-InBev has decided to discontinue the Belle-Vue Gueuze brand. The reason is a sharp drop in demand, a spokesperson for the brewer confirmed on 25 August. In the future, only Belle-Vue Kriek will be brewed in Leeuw-Saint-Pierre, a town southwest of Brussels. The decision is not expected to result in any job losses.
BrewDog’s co-founder Martin Dickie has abruptly left the Ellon-based craft brewer and pub operator in mid-August. He said the decision was taken for personal reasons, as he now wants to spend more time with his young family. His resignation comes a year after James Watt stepped down as BrewDog’s CEO and moved to the newly-created position of “captain and co-founder”. The business confirmed in July it would close ten UK bars – including its flagship Aberdeen venue – citing rising costs, increased regulation and wider economic pressures. And in August, UK media revealed that BrewDog’s flagship brand, Punk IPA, has been removed from 1,980 UK pubs over the past two years, which means a 52 percent drop in distribution. Given this string of negative publicity, Mr Dickie could only do the right thing and resign, it seems.
After all, he has a reputation as a businessman to protect. Although Mr Dickie will retain his shareholding in BrewDog, he is now focussed on building a new venture, Waterside Pharmaceuticals, which secured a Home Office licence to grow cannabis for medical use last year.
Over in the US, AB-InBev wants to tidy up its red network, its system of 500 nominally independent distributors, separating the good distributors from the bad ones, observers say. To that end, AB-InBev is willing to divest a significant asset. On 20 August, the brewer announced it had sold its New York City distribution operation to Southern Glazer’s Wine & Spirits. Privately-owned Southern Glazer’s is the largest wine and spirits distributor in the US, operating in 47 states with an estimated revenue of USD 26 billion in 2024. Although no financial details were disclosed, insiders assume this is a low billion dollar acquisition by Southern Glazer’s.
By acquiring AB-InBev’s wholly-owned New York distributor, Southern Glazer’s is significantly expanding into the beer and RTD categories. In fact, the deal transforms Southern Glazer’s into a total beverage distributor in New York, allowed to carry both alcoholic and non-alcoholic drinks.
Irish drinks industry: whiskey in trouble. Only in 2022 had the Killarney Brewing & Distilling Co. expanded to become Ireland’s largest independently-owned beer and whiskey producer. In July, it closed down with the loss of about 50 jobs, the latest casualty of a short-lived whisky boom. Several distilleries have closed or cut production in recent months. In April, Pernod Ricard’s Irish Distillers halted production in Midleton, Cork, though it has since resumed. The maker of Jameson whiskey pushed back the opening of its new distillery to 2027 from 2025. At the end of June, Diageo said it would place an “extended pause” at its Roe & Co. distillery, after launching the brand in Dublin eight years ago. Independent distillers have been particularly impacted by the downturn. The Dublin Liberties Distillery has been closed since May, a temporary measure only, the owners said. In Waterford, southern Ireland, the Waterford Whisky distillery, famous for its terroir-inspired whiskeys, went into receivership late last year.
The pauses and closures are a far cry from the recent boom experienced by the industry. Between 2010 and 2024, the number of Irish distilleries rose to over 50, from just four in 2010, sparked by the renewed demand for whiskey. By 2022, exports of Irish whiskey to the US had risen to 5.8 million cases (9 litres each), more than double the levels a decade earlier. In 2024, they were down by a third from 2022 levels when the covid pandemic’s “revenge buying” had peaked.
Now Ireland is facing another blow from US tariffs. While the EU – of which Ireland is a member – faces a 15 percent tariff on most of its exports, including alcohol, rival whisky distillers in Scotland only face a 10 percent tariff in America, thanks to being part of the United Kingdom.
Is Jim Koch, 76, becoming the Warren Buffett of the craft brewing industry, going on and on? Despite his advanced years, Mr Koch returned to Boston Beer’s C-suite in mid-August, after the firm’s CEO, Michael Spillane, stepped down due to personal reasons. Mr Spillane has served on Boston Beer’s board since 2016 and became President and CEO in April 2024. He will remain on the board as a nonexecutive director. Mr Koch, the company’s Chairman, previously held the CEO role from the company’s founding in 1984 until 2001. Boston Beer has not started a search to fill the CEO position as it hopes to recruit internally. “I don’t anticipate doing this in five years,” Mr Koch told the Wall Street Journal. “There are multiple people who are not yet ready, but in a couple of years, one or two of them will be.”
Today, Boston Beer is a wholly different company to the one Mr Koch last oversaw a quarter-century ago. Among legacy craft brewers, its portfolio is the most diverse, and craft beer is only a small part of it. Boston Beer depends heavily on flavoured alcoholic beverages like Twisted Tea and Truly for its present volume, and spirit-based RTD Sun Cruiser for its future outlook. It will be interesting to see how Mr Koch will run Boston Beer: will he try to maintain the status-quo while grooming his successor, or will he take the opportunity and actively shape Boston Beer according to his will? This is his life’s work, after all.
South Africa’s vintners are bracing for a hit after a 30 percent US tariff left them at a sharp disadvantage to their international rivals. Africa’s largest economy exports more than half of its wine production, valued at USD 500 million per year. The US was its fourth-largest market in 2024, behind the UK, Germany and the Netherlands. The 30 percent tariff on South Africa agricultural produce, which went into effect on 5 August, exceeds the 15 percent levied on wines from France, Italy and Spain, as well as the 10 percent on wines from Australia, Argentina and Chile. The tariff could have an outsize impact on an industry employing 270,000 people in a country where – officially – one in three cannot find a job. About 200 of South Africa’s 512 wineries export to the United States.
Some wise guys suggested that vintners should shift their focus and boost intra-African trade. However, Africa’s infrastructure is notoriously bad and it is more expensive to ship South African wine to, say, Kenya than to Europe or the United States. Worse still, high tariffs, complex customs procedures, and non-tariff barriers such as inconsistent regulations and quality standards hamper trade. All this would make South African wine far from affordable for many Africans.
Trouble brewing at Heineken Austria: PR honcho departs after one year. At the end of August, Daniela Winnicki, Director Corporate Affairs and Press Spokesperson of Brau Union/Heineken Austria, resigned after a tenure of only one year. This raised eyebrows and led to chatter about what is going on at Brau Union. The local market leader owns brands like Gösser, Zipfer, Kaiser, Wieselburger, Schwechater, Reininghaus, Villacher, Fohrenburger and Schladminger and sells in excess of 5 million hl beer annually. The timing of her resignation speaks volumes. Only in May, Brau Union announced a controversial job creation at its communications department. Three new positions were added, all reporting to Ms Winnicki. At a time when Brau Union is cutting costs and jobs, the staff increase astonished many observers. What is more, none of the new hires have any beer industry experience, or previously worked in FMCG. Not enough, the person in charge of public affairs continues to work as a yoga teacher, according to her website. Who would have thought that Brau Union’s HR department would go for such outside-the-box candidates?
Even more amazingly, in early July, Ms Winnicki presented Brau Union’s redesigned brand identity, which was to strengthen Brau Union’s Austrian credentials. However, the new logo, with its white letters against a green (!) backdrop, suspiciously evokes Heineken’s. This somewhat defeats the purpose of underlining Brau Union’s independence, doesn’t it? The green logo also reminded industry insiders that, in 2023, Brau Union was accused of greenwashing and found guilty. It had claimed that its Gösser brand was brewed “100% CO2 neutral”. The court ruled the advertising was misleading because it excluded the malting process, where natural gas is used.
Don’t we live in a funny old world if a PR executive is first given free rein and then resigns – all within a few weeks?
Deposit on cans disrupts Austria’s beer market. Major changes to Austria’s beverage container deposit scheme on 1 January have led to “structural changes” in the beer market. Although there are no data available yet, observers suspect that sales of canned beer and beverages have declined significantly, especially in regions which border Hungary and Slovenia. Cross-border shoppers liked to stock up on deposit-free beer. No longer, apparently.
On 1 January, for the first time, beverage cans became subject to a deposit of EUR 0.25 (USD 0.29) like other single-use containers, while the deposit on beer bottles was hiked to EUR 0.20 from previously EUR 0.09. Der Standard, a newspaper, reported of a “significant decline” in canned beer sales, equalling millions of litres of beer less sold. Some of the decline may be attributed to hoarders, who had built stockpiles ahead of the introduction of the deposit. But a large part of the sales drop is due to a slump in border regions. When canned beer did not attract a deposit, it was attractive for commuters and visitors from Hungary and Slovenia to stock up on beer in Austria. Since the introduction of the relatively high deposit this is no longer the case. Hungary charges a deposit of EUR 0.15 per can, while Slovenia charges none.