Post World Cup Q3 sales down 9.7%

The respite that football’s World Cup offered beleaguered UK brewers, providing an upturn in beer sales for the second quarter of 2010, has been brief. The latest figures released by the British Beer & Pub Association indicate a 9.7% decline in year-on-year beer sales for the three months to the end of September.

Beer sales in Q3 totalled 6,491,000 barrels (10.6 million hectolitres) down from 7,186,000 barrels for Q3 2009. The figure also represents a 15.7% decline from Q2 ’10, when beer sales rose by 2.9%, the first quarterly gain since the second quarter of 2006 - depressingly for UK brewers the last time that the World Cup was staged.
 
BBPA chief executive Brigid Simmonds attributed the decline not only to the normal sales slump following a World Cup, but also to the usual so-so British summer weather and continuing economic and consumer uncertainty. She called on the government to ease the tax and regulatory burdens faced by her members.

“Independent forecasts show the potential for the hospitality sector to play a leading role in generating growth and jobs,” said Simmonds. “Government is also looking to the private sector to step into the breach and create jobs following the spending review. It’s time for government to ease that path by lightening the regulatory and tax load under which currently burdens the sector and is a brake on growth.”

The most recent beer duty hike was a 5% increase imposed by then Labour chancellor Alastair Darling in April, taking the total percentage increase in duty to 26.1% since March 2008. The BBPA’s leadership also argues that the Treasury’s own statistics now show a decrease in tax revenue since this series of increases have been imposed, and thus should be rolled back.

BBPA members account for 98% of the beer brewed in the UK and nearly two thirds of Britain’s 52,500 pubs.