Bad weather, higher excise duties take big bite out of Dutch beer sales

Cold and wet weather and an increase in excise duties have been bad news for beer sales in the Netherlands. Sales volumes dropped by just over 5 percent in the first half of this year. “This is really a significant drop across the board,” a spokesperson for Nederlandse Brouwers, the association for Dutch beer brewers, told NU.nl.

Supermarket sales were hit particularly hard. Supermarkets sold 6.6 percent less beer than in the first half of 2023. The hospitality industry saw beer sales drop by 1.9 percent.

The sales of lager, which still accounts for a 75 percent market share, fell by 4.4 percent. Specialty beer sales fell by 4.6 percent, and beer mixes saw a 16.5 percent decrease.

“The decline in sales of non-alcoholic beer, by almost 10 percent, is particularly striking,” the Nederlandse Brouwers spokesperson said to NU.nl. “Until this year, that was a growth market.”

Nederlandse Brouwers thinks the increase in excise duties, of 8 percent on alcoholic beer and almost 200 percent on non-alcoholic beer, is the main culprit behind the fall in sales. “We see sales declines in the Netherlands and increases across the border,” the spokesperson said. “The price differences between beer in the Netherlands and Belgium and especially between the Netherlands and Germany are becoming too large.”

But the bad weather in the past few months, including the wet and cold start to summer, certainly did not help, the spokesperson added. The Dutch brewers have their hopes pinned on the rest of summer. “We hope that people will go to the terrace more often to have a beer or have a barbecue.”