Beer consumption is on the rise worldwide (not counting 2020), however, although the number of products and brands is growing and diversifying, the beneficiaries are only a handful of companies that have a large part of the market in their power .
Regarding the international beer week that has been commemorated for more than 10 years in the second week of August in much of the world, different consulting firms and specialized media in the beverage market published data and statistics related to consumption and sales.
Statista, for example, released an interesting graph that shows that although many lovers of sparkling drink change brands in search of different products made by different companies, in reality, they are drinking from the same hand.
Indeed, a large part of world production and distribution It is controlled by a small group of conglomerates in the brewing industry.
The concentration process is not new, but it has accelerated in the last 20 years. Since the beginning of this century, companies such as Anheuser Busch InBev (known as AB Inbev), Heineken and Carlsberg have achieved the consolidation of several dozen beer brands under their corporate umbrellas, creating what could be described as an illusion of choice that does not exist for customers around the world.
For example, of the 5 most valuable beer brands according to BrandFinance data, 4 of them belong to the same company: AB InBev. This brewery, of Belgian-Brazilian origin, has brands of universal recognition such as Budweiser, Beck’s, Stella Artois, Leffe, Model, the Mexican Corona, the Brazilian Brahma and the Argentine Quilmes.
Although it is true that the company had to get rid of the US business of Modelo and Corona in order for them to pass into the hands of Constellation Brands (this because of the control of antitrust organizations regarding the purchase of Grupo Modelo), it still continues to have a very wide variety of global brands high penetration in giant markets.
“You could go to a bar, try 5 different beers from 5 different nations without knowing that ABInBev is the exclusive supplier,” they describe in Statista.
While it is true that craft beer brands have been growing in recent years, their production is still minimal compared to the industry and their volumes are overshadowed by the big players in the sector.
According to data from the Brewers Association, the 8,760 craft breweries in the US produce 23.1 million barrels (2020 data).
To take one dimension, ABInBev alone produced almost 17 times more, according to data from Barth Haas.
Together, the 6 largest beer conglomerates in the world seen in Statista’s chart account for about 60% of world beer production.
According to data from the trade association representing small and independent American craft brewers, the annual production of that country’s craft beer industry produced 23.1 million barrels of beer in 2020, down 9%. Thus, the general share of the beer market fell from 13.6% to 12.3%.
The beer market, as a whole, fell 3 percent in volume sold in 2020.