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Beer brewers demand state aid: beer worth millions poured away during pandemic

2021-02-22T14:43:21.344Z


No more festivals, restaurants and pubs have been closed for months - Germany's brewers are losing their income. In contrast to the catering trade, they hardly receive any state aid. Many breweries are threatened with bankruptcy, their associations warn.


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It hardly flows out of barrels:

beer brewers in Germany fear for their livelihood due to the lockdown for hotels and restaurants

Photo: A3528 Armin Weigel / dpa

Beer shouldn't be stored refrigerated for much longer than six months, after which it loses its taste or becomes inedible, say experts.

The months-long lockdown with closed restaurants and pubs and the elimination of major events are therefore particularly problematic for Germany's brewers.

"Goods worth many million euros that have exceeded their shelf life have already had to be destroyed," says the open letter from the industry, which is demanding more support from the state.

The more closely a company is connected to the catering and event business, the more serious its slump in sales.

On average, the drop in sales was 23 percent last year.

The low-margin bottled beer sales in the retail trade could not even come close to compensating for the massive losses in turnover in the hospitality industry and the losses in export, warn the two leading associations of the German brewing industry, the German Brewers' Association and the Association of Private Breweries Germany, in the joint statement that manager magazin has.

300 companies have signed the letter, they stand for around 95 percent of the beer brewed in Germany, it is said.

Brewers demand compensation for perishable goods

It is true that the state deferred the beer tax on brewers during the first lockdown in order to relieve the companies financially.

But this was just a deferral and hardly more than the notorious drop in the bucket.

While the state of the catering industry is helping with aid programs in the pandemic, the 1,500 farmers in Germany have so far been largely left empty-handed.

Many of them are family businesses.

"If the federal and state governments do not take targeted, decisive and quick countermeasures with financial support, many of our companies are threatened with bankruptcy," warn the associations.

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The associations propose, among other things, that the federal government should pay the breweries "compensation" for perishable goods - similar to what is planned in retail for so-called seasonal goods.

Loss of value of perishable goods such as draft beer would have to be taken into account up to 100 percent as reimbursable fixed costs.

In addition, brewery inns would have to be recognized as catering establishments and thus be entitled to November and December aid.

So far, many brewery inns have been classified as mixed operations and would therefore often fail to meet the funding criteria.

Tax relief and relief for KfW loans as well as an opening strategy for the catering industry are also on the list of demands of the industry.

rei

Source: spiegel

All news articles on 2021-02-22

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