On January 16, a group of five Japanese breweries announced their beer shipments volume in 2018.
Over the past year, total beer beverage shipments volume amounted to 393.9 million boxes (about 12.66 litres of 20 bottles in one box), a decrease of 2.5% compared with the previous year, and a record low for 14 consecutive years. In addition, there will be no data on the percentage of beer market in the future due to the fact that Japanese beer brewing industry groups have stopped publishing "taxed shipments" since 2019. The reason is that the statistics since 1992, whether the volume of shipments should cover the supermarket and supermarket private brand, there are opinions on the opposition.
The findings were presented by an industry group of five breweries, Asahi, Kirin, Suntory, Sapporo, Orion,non-listed companies. In 2018, the total volume of beer beverages shipped was 393.9 million boxes (one case was 20 bottles = 633 ml x 20 bottles, about 12.66 liters), a decrease of 2.5% annually, which was also a record low for 14 consecutive years. From the market share, Asahi 37.4%, Kirin 34.4%, Suntory 16.0%, Sapporo 11.4%, Olian 0.9%.
In terms of shipments volume, beer decreased by 5.2% and sparkling wine by 8.8%. Among of them, the drop in beer shipments was the largest after the 6.7% annual drop in Lehman Brothers'financial tsunami in 2009. The proportion of beer in total beer drinks dropped below 50% to 49.2%. In addition, Japanese young people do not like to drink beer nowadays, which also causes the Japanese beer consumption market to shrink day by day. In the spring of 2018, beer companies raised the prices of bottled beer and barreled beer, which are mainly in the catering industry, and thus affected beer sales. The third category beer with lower tax price is favored by consumers because of its low price.
Note:
Beer: Simply speaking, according to the Japanese wine tax law, beer is made of malt, hops, water as raw materials, and can also use rice and corn as legal by-materials. However, the use of malt must be higher than 50%.
Sparkling wine: malt usage is less than 50%.
The third category beer: refers to sparkling liquor without malt and malt ingredients in raw materials and adding distilled liquor, which can be categorized as this kind of beer.
