Production of beer in Bulgaria fell 4% in 2017 – Eurostat
The production of beer in Bulgaria in 2017 was four per cent lower than in 2016, EU statistics agency Eurostat said on August 3, releasing figures to mark World Beer Day.
In 2017, over 41 billion litres of beer containing alcohol were produced in the European Union (EU), 2.5 billion litres more than in 2016. The EU’s beer production was equivalent to almost 81 litres per inhabitant.
In addition, the EU produced nearly 900 million litres (two per cent) of beer which contained less than 0.5 per cent alcohol or had no alcohol content at all.
Two-thirds of the beer containing alcohol produced in the EU came from six member states.
Germany was the top producer in 2017 with a production of 8.1 billion litres (or 20 per cent of the EU total production). 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 (5.6 billion litres produced, or 14 per cent), Poland (four bn litres, or 10 per cent), the Netherlands (3.9 bn litres, or nine per cent), Spain (3.6 bn litres, or nine per cent) and Belgium (2.4 bn litres or six per cent).
Compared with 2016, the Netherlands (+48 per cent) recorded the highest increase in the production of beer containing alcohol, followed by the United Kingdom (+14 per cent) and Portugal (+11 per cent). In contrast, the production of beer in Greece fell by -9 per cent, followed by Slovakia (-5 per cent), Bulgaria and Lithuania (both – 4 per cent).
The internal market for beers containing alcohol that are not produced in the EU is marginal. However, when importing from non EU-countries, EU member states favoured Mexican beer (211 million litres, or 52 per cent of all extra-EU imports of beer in 2017), ahead of Serbian beer (48 million litres, 12 per cent), US beer (39 million litres, 10 per cent), Belarusian beer (23 million litres, 6 per cent), Chinese beer (16 million litres, 4 per cent), Ukrainian beer (11 million litres, 3 per cent), Russian beer (10 million litres, 3 per cent) and Thai beer (9 million litres, 2 per cent).
(Photo: Pavlo Araujo/sxc.hu)
