Sales of beer dropped by 3.4% in 2024; higher excise duties and taxes named as reasons

Beer sales dropped by 3.4 percent in the Netherlands compared to 2023, Stichting Dranken Nederland reported based on numbers provided by Dutch brewers. The substantial increases in beer excise duty and consumption tax as of 1 January 2024 had a particularly heavy impact, according to the Association for Alcohol in the Netherlands. As a result, sales of both alcoholic and non-alcoholic beer fell last year.

In 2024, the beer market had to deal with continuously high costs for raw materials, energy, logistics, packaging, an average consumer's climate, and tough weather circumstances.

In addition, was the substantial increase in beer excise duty by more than eight percent and the increase in consumption tax on non-alcoholic beer by almost 200 percent.

Sales of alcohol free beers dropped by 2.7 percent, after years of strong growth. Within this segment, sales of alcohol free pilsner beers dropped by six percent. Alcohol free pilsner beer is considered to play an important role in prevention of alcoholism, which has led to the association being concerned by this development.

Although the popularity of alcohol free specialty beers is continuing to grow, the impact of the high excise duty resulted in this growth slowing down last year. It still grew by more than nine percent in 2024, however this number was at 30 percent in 2023.

Beer consumption in catering establishments dropped by 1.1 percent last year. Home consumption dropped by over four percent, although there was a slight recovery regarding this in the second half of 2024. There was a growth of 0.5 percent in home consumption in December. The beer manufacturing companies stated that they hope this growth will continue.

The beer manufacturers were pleased that the Cabinet decided against further increasing the excise duty and consumption tax this year. The Cabinet is also currently working on a proposition to implement differing tariffs on the consumption tax.

The companies are calling on the Cabinet to give serious consideration to alcoholism prevention when revising the consumption tax and to exempt non-alcoholic beer from the new consumption tax, as is also done in England, for example.