War in Ukraine drives up beer prices: Franconian breweries “under massive pressure”

Created: 03/18/2022 13:06

By: Magdalena von Zumbusch

Apparently the beer is getting more expensive.

Only the Corona crisis caused beer sales to collapse completely.

Now the Ukraine war is giving the beer industry existential fears.

Nuremberg - Food prices have been rising since the beginning of the Ukraine war.

Products such as oil or flour were also sometimes hard to get hold of in the supermarkets.

Now the German Brewers' Association is also warning of further increases in beer prices.

The president of the private breweries in Bavaria confirms this development and points out that the situation is not only unpleasant for consumers, but also very difficult for the breweries.

In Nuremberg, important addresses for Bavarian beer such as the Schanzenbrauerei or the Altstadthof brewery are affected.

Until the war: Ukraine one of the largest wheat suppliers in the world

Malt, barley and wheat are the three grains used in brewing beer.

The Ukraine, like Russia, has so far been one of the most important grain suppliers for Bavaria.

In view of the war, grain production in Ukraine is collapsing and sanctions have been imposed on grain deliveries from Russia.

This contributes significantly to the bottlenecks in grain deliveries to Bavaria.

The tight market situation in turn leads to rising prices.

The price of wheat, for example, made the biggest jump in 13 years this year.

Even before the start of the Ukraine conflict, malt, an important grain for the brewing process, had risen in price by up to 60 percent within a year.

, Georg Rittmayer, President of the private breweries in Bavaria, says :

“The market for malting barley and malt is currently very tight.

There are still remaining quantities, but at very expensive prices.

Our brewery is in the fortunate position of having stocked up on sufficient malt early on.

So our beer production for the next few months is secured.”

Very few breweries have this convenient location.

"Should the prices remain at such a high level, in individual cases it may well be a question of the existence of a company," says Rittmayer.

Another problem for breweries since the Ukraine war: high energy prices

In addition to the scarce raw materials, the higher energy prices in production are also causing problems for the breweries.

Electricity and gas for the operation of machines and heating as well as the higher costs for transport and logistics are passed on to consumers.

The cost factors put many Franconian breweries under “massive pressure”, says Rittmayer at

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"The prices for raw materials, packaging, energy and logistics are literally going through the roof, to ever more absurd heights," reports Nina Goellinger, spokeswoman for the German Brewers' Association.

Exact price increase not yet foreseeable

"For the German consumer, this means that not only whole grain and grain products such as bread, for example, will become more expensive, but it will also have an impact on the brewing barley and thus on our beer," says Jörg Reisenweber from the Bavarian State Institute for Agriculture to the BR .

Georg Rittmayer and the German Brewers' Association cannot yet give exact figures.

What is certain, however, is that the breweries will raise their beer prices in order to cover their costs.

How much more expensive a box is, is loud

still open, "simply because no one can say exactly how high the prices for raw materials, energy and logistics will rise in the near future," said Rittmayer to the Franconian portal.

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