Tuesday the 2nd of July 2019, we have been weeks waiting for it (months, in fact) and yesterday, finally, the day arrived: Cerveceros de España, through its General manager Jacobo Olalla and together with Luis Planas, acting Agriculture, Fishing and Alimentation Minister and Emilio Gallego, General secretary of the Confederación Empresarial de Hostelería de España, presented the Informe socioeconómico del consumo de la cerveza en España 2018.
The annual report published by the Spanish brewers association doesn’t leave place for any doubt: beer consumption in Spain is clearly growing one more year and this is the 6th year in positive figures since 2013, when the decreasing tendency was broken. The brewing sector has surpassed the 40 million hectoliters consumed for the first time in the decade and it does not seems that the tendency is going to revert in the next years.
A promising future
And why this growing tendency? Well, we don’t have a single reason but many factors explain this growth and makes us thing that the Spanish market not only will continue being one of the most important beer markets in the world, it will keep increasing its importance too:
- Transversal beer consumption: the 87% of adults has drank beer almost one time in 2018.
- Growing tourism: It is not a secret that tourism and growing beer consumption go together. In 2018 tourism in Spain grew and that was reflected in a growth of beer consumption.
- Economic improvement: The improvement of the Spanish economy incentives people to go out and consume more.
This factors has help to rise the beer consumption outdoors: it has reached the 67% of total beer consumption.
Despite being one of the markets with a bigger beer consumption, per capita consumption is still below the European average: Spaniards drink 51.8 liters per person. This figure indicates a moderate and responsible consumption pattern.
Spanish pubs and restaurants, clean your beer towers, prepare your beer taps and be ready to pour a lot of pints. Summer is here and there is no better way to celebrate it than drinking a good beer.