Last year, 39 billion litres of beer containing alcohol were produced in the European Union (EU), 400 million litres more than in 2015. The EU beer production was equivalent to 76 litres per inhabitant.
In addition, nearly 900 million litres (2%) contained less than 0.5% alcohol or no alcohol at all were produced in the EU in 2016.
Germany, top producer
Two-thirds of the beer containing alcohol produced in the EU came from six Member States.
With a production of 8.3 billion litres (or 21% of the EU total production), Germany was the top producer in 2016. In other words, about one in every five beers containing alcohol produced in the EU originated from Germany. Germany was followed by the United Kingdom (5.1 billion litres produced, or 13%), Poland (4.0 bn litres, or 10%), Spain (3.7 bn litres, or 9%), the Netherlands (2.6 bn litres, or 7%) and Belgium (2.3 bn litres or 6%).
The Netherlands top exporter
The Netherlands exported 1.9 bn litres of beer containing alcohol in 2016. This made it the largest beer exporter of all EU Member States, ahead of Germany (1.7 bn litres), Belgium (1.5 bn litres), France (0.7 bn litres) and the United Kingdom (0.6 bn litres).
The United States was by far the main destination for beer exports to non-EU countries (1.1 billion litres of beer containing alcohol exported there in 2016, or 34% of total extra-EU exports of beer), followed by China (525 million litres, 16%), Canada (202 million litres, 6%), Korea (117 million litres, 4%), Switzerland (113 million litres, 3%) and Taiwan (101 million litres, 3%).
Mexican beer heads extra-EU imports
The internal market for beers containing alcohol that are not produced in the EU is marginal. However, when importing from non EU-countries, Member States favoured Mexican beer (179.5 million litres, or nearly half of all extra-EU imports of beer in 2016), ahead of Serbian beer (46.9 million litres, 13%), US beer (36.5 million litres, 10%), Belarusian beer (20.6 million litres, 6%), Chinese beer (16.4 million litres, 4%) and Russian beer (11.6 million litres, 3%).
Source: ec.europa.eu / Norway Today
