• Beer is not a separate product.

    Like all the others, it has increased in recent months and will continue to do so.

  • 20 Minutes

    interviewed brewers to understand the reasons for this increase.

    Barley, hops, cardboard, glass, steel, aluminium, water, gas… Everything needed to produce this precious beverage is constantly increasing.

    Not to mention the salaries of the people who produce it.

  • “Will people continue to drink our non-essential products once they've filled up their cars?

    asks an Alsatian brewer.

“Not a day goes by without a supplier announcing an increase…” The president of the Alsatian brewery Licorne, Dominique Baudendistel, has been going through a turbulent period in recent months.

Like its competitors and all sectors in general, the rise in prices spares no one.

The favorite alcoholic drink of the French has also been more expensive in recent months.

And it may not be over!

"Over the year 2022, we can speak of an increase of around 5% for blondes and even more for special beers", estimates the manager of a company which produces nearly a million hectoliters per year.

Or a small twentieth of national production.

“Me, I increased by 1.7% in January and I will certainly have to come back to it,” supports Eric Trossat, of the Lower Rhine microbrewery Uberach.

He too deplores the multiple costs that are rising sharply.

“Some, I understand them, but others… I sometimes have the impression that suppliers take advantage of this.

“It's the whole chain that is affected.

“Between the soaring price of raw materials, packaging, transport and energy, the production costs of our companies are exploding”, thus lamented, in mid-April, the union of Brasseurs de France.

For the entire sector, the organization evokes increases "from 13 to 60% for glassware", "more than 60% for aluminum" or "more than 20% for cardboard".

Energy costs that “may have tripled”

In its premises in Saverne (Bas-Rhin), Dominique Baudendistel confirms all these figures.

“We are in all ranges.

For example, glass is much less than 60% here because we were under contract, like the biggest breweries.

But the price of energy has skyrocketed and since to produce beer, you have to heat and cool, it represents enormous additional expenses.

Our costs may have tripled!

»

Barley, hops, cardboard, glass, steel, aluminium, water, gas… Everything needed to produce this precious beverage is constantly increasing.

Not to mention the salaries of the people who produce it.

"If you find a boss who has managed to avoid increases, tell me," smiles Dominique Baudendistel, who fears a complicated accounting year.

“Especially after two years of already difficult Covid-19, this must have been when we started to repay our state guaranteed loans [PGE].

»

Eric Trossat speaks squarely of a potentially “deficit” exercise.

“It would be the first in twenty-three years of existence…”.

Above all, one question worries the brewers.

“Will people continue to drink our non-essential products once they've filled up their cars?

“Answer this summer, the season when a Frenchman consumes the majority of his annual 33 liters of beer.

Did you see ?

Germany: A city wants to cap the price of beer in its bars

Lille

Lille: How tasters decide between 530 French beers in a competition

  • Economy

  • Beer

  • Alcohol

  • Consumption

  • Strasbourg

  • Great East