The German reusable system has a problem.
Brewers complain that the bottles are coming back too slowly.
The industry is now debating higher deposit prices.
Munich – The German brewery industry is currently discussing deposits.
According to a report by the German Press Agency,
the increased prices for new bottles increase
the level of suffering.
While some in the industry consider a drastic increase to be necessary in order to set up the reusable system well in the long term, others warn of costs of hundreds of millions of euros and scared customers.
But the changeover in particular would probably cause problems in the short term.
The core of the problem is that a new beer bottle costs much more than the deposit that is usually charged on it, which is usually eight cents.
“With the current deposit amount, the return incentive is not big enough.
As a result, many bottles and crates are lost and have to be bought more expensively,” says Lothar Ebbertz, General Manager of the Bavarian Brewers’ Association.
A higher deposit, on the other hand, could bring the bottles back faster, he says.
Brewery industry: does the deposit have to increase?
Increase is difficult to implement
However, the Brewers' Association is not in favor of an increase.
"The devil is in the details," says Ebbertz.
The German Brewers' Association is also cautious.
A deposit increase would be "very difficult to implement" and "extremely costly for the breweries," emphasizes General Manager Holger Eichele.
In addition, in addition to all beverage manufacturers and bottlers, retailers and consumers would also have to get involved.
The burden on the brewers would arise in particular from the fact that if the deposit for bottles and crates that are already in circulation were to be increased, they would have to pay back more deposit than they had previously received and higher reserves would be required in the balance sheet.
Eichele calculates that an increase in the deposit rate to 15 cents would cost the breweries a total of 280 million euros for four billion returnable beer bottles on the German market.
At 25 cents it would even be 680 million euros.
Will the beer deposit increase?
In the long term, the conversion will pay for itself for the brewers
Sebastian Priller, head of the Riegele brewery in Augsburg, which is known for Spezi, also sees the burden on the industry.
Priller rekindled the debate with his
demand for a deposit of ten euros for a crate filled with 20 bottles in the
Augsburger Allgemeine .
His argument: For many companies, a changeover would mean losses in the short term.
In his own house, too, an increase to ten euros per crate would mean a one-off charge of around five million euros, says the brewery boss.
However, this is offset by seven-figure costs per year due to the loss of bottles and crates.
A higher deposit would reduce this significantly, at least Priller is convinced of that.
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Will the beer deposit rise soon?
The industry is discussing about ten euros per crate.
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© imago
Priller believes that the bottles would then be returned more quickly and that a lost bottle would be compensated for by a higher deposit.
However, the German Brewers' Association has doubts as to whether the empties with a higher deposit really come back faster.
In a survey, only 22 percent of consumers said so, says Eichele.
And in principle, the reusable circuit still works very well with the current rates.
Consumers are overwhelmed by the increase in deposits on beer bottles
The large Veltins brewery in the Sauerland is clearly opposed to a deposit increase.
It is the wrong way to "overwhelm the loyal consumer, especially in these consumer-heavy times, with sharp increases in the deposit rate," warns the chief representative, Michael Huber.
"These attempts are thrown into the discussion at regular intervals, only to fail due to the complexity of the German reusable system." The risks of a changeover are "enormous".
"The discussion has started," says industry expert Niklas Other, who
publishes the beverage market magazine
Inside .
It is obvious that after many, many years you want to turn the deposit.
But the debate is still at the beginning.
"It's all half-baked."
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Largest beer tasting in Europe
Brewing industry: The level of suffering for the brewers increases with every cent
In recent years, the level of suffering caused by the objectively too low deposit would not have been so high "that the industry would have been willing to accept the costs and difficulties of a changeover," recalls Lothar Ebbertz.
But the topic is not off the table.
The level of suffering increases with every cent that the bottles become more expensive to buy.
"We are approaching a point where we have to address the issue." At least the Federal Cartel Office could not mess with the brewers' pricing policy here, as it did when it imposed millions of fines on well-known brands.
While brewers are still discussing price adjustments for their bottles, the EU is planning new specifications for plastic bottles in supermarkets.
(dpa)
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