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Olaf Scholz visiting the brewery: does the chancellor have to go?
Photo: Bernd Weissbrod / dpa
Inflation seems to be weakening, there are no signs of a gas shortage: the economy has recently been rather cautiously optimistic.
But now an industry is sounding the alarm that sees itself as a cultural asset: the brewers.
They warn of massively increasing costs for consumers.
"If breweries and restaurateurs pass on their additional costs in full to the consumer, we'll be at 7.50 euros for half a liter at the end of the year," said Stefan Fritsche of the "Bild" newspaper.
He is Vice President of the Berlin-Brandenburg Brewery Association and Managing Director of the Neuzelle Monastery Brewery.
Many customers are not willing to pay significantly higher prices for beer.
The industry is therefore "facing the greatest challenge in German brewing history".
Many breweries are threatened with extinction.
The association representative demanded: "We need the beer summit in the Chancellery to preserve Germany's most important cultural asset!"
The German Brewers' Association (DBB) has also predicted price increases.
Above all, sharply rising costs for raw materials and preliminary products as well as personnel and logistics are a burden on companies:
Bottle cap
prices
have more than doubled.
According to the federal association, carbonic acid
cost 90 percent more in November than a year earlier.
For
labels
, the surcharge is 30 percent,
35 percent
for
hops
and
90 percent for
brewing malt .
For the months of January to November 2022, the German brewing industry reported an increase in sales of 3.2 percent to 81.2 million hectoliters of beer (excluding non-alcoholic varieties).
However, this is only a positive signal at first glance, because in the pre-Corona year 2019, beer sales in the same period were 85.2 million hectoliters, it said.
Overall, after three years of continuous crisis, the industry is much more resilient than before, according to the German Brewers' Association.
mmq/Reuters/AFP
