Leading online craft beer distribution marketplace EeBriaTrade has released the first of two parts of industry research, using data from over 600 different craft breweries.
One of the biggest trends to come out of the report is the exponential growth in No and Low alcohol (less than 2.8%) beer. In the last two years, this has seen a growth of 381%, with nearly 2.5% of all craft beer sold being 2.8% and below and 1.2% of all craft beer being no more than 0.5% in strength. With some breweries now specializing in low alcohol, such as Big Drop, Infinite Session and Small Beer, as well as established breweries adding low alcohol beers to their range, like Thornbridge’s Big Easy, it seems like this is an area of craft that will continue to expand.
One of the other big recent trends is the growth of cans over the past few years. In 2016 they were only 16% of all packaged craft beer sold, but this has grown to represent 72% of the market. Cans are demonstrably more popular with consumers too as the breweries that made the switch from bottles to cans found on average that their rate of sale almost tripled. Within cans, the new larger 440ml can has become the most popular, going from effectively a standing start in early 2017 to over 40% of all bottles and cans being in this more shareable format.
The analysis is based on info on the UK market, and the full report also covers the growth and decline of various different beer styles (a marked switch away from traditional British beer styles), along with industry price trends, and the impact that beer quality has on the price of a pint.
You can download Part One of the research here. EeBriaTrade will be releasing part two of their report in April which will cover a wide range of topics from seasonality, locality, varieties in habits of different regions of the UK, changes in alcohol percentage as well as how breweries are changing their beer ranges in line with demand.
EeBriaTrade is currently crowdfunding on leading investment platform Seedrs to take the marketplace international, planning to launch in 8 new countries in 2019. For more information, please visit: http://invest.eebriatrade.com.
CEO and co-founder David Jackson said: “Craft Beer is rapidly growing area of the beer industry, but it can be hard to track what’s going on in such a fast-moving space. At EeBriaTrade we work with over 600 breweries through our beer distribution marketplace, so have access to an enormous amount of data on the industry. It’s exciting to be able to identify trends whilst they’re happening and be able to see in numbers what we already believe is happening.
The whole craft beer market is exploding all across Europe at the moment and we want to bring our unique marketplace to those countries, and ultimately create a global marketplace where everybody can access the world’s best beers, ciders, wines and spirits.”