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"It's insane": Raw material crisis threatens Bavarian breweries - beer bottles in summer short?

2022-05-20T07:09:26.115Z


"It's insane": Raw material crisis threatens Bavarian breweries - beer bottles in summer short? Created: 05/20/2022, 08:59 By: Stefan Sessler, Johannes Welte Everything is getting more expensive: Like all brewers, Michael Schweinberger from the Maisach brewery is struggling with rising prices for raw materials and energy. Nevertheless, he does not want to increase the beer prices for the time b


"It's insane": Raw material crisis threatens Bavarian breweries - beer bottles in summer short?

Created: 05/20/2022, 08:59

By: Stefan Sessler, Johannes Welte

Everything is getting more expensive: Like all brewers, Michael Schweinberger from the Maisach brewery is struggling with rising prices for raw materials and energy.

Nevertheless, he does not want to increase the beer prices for the time being.

© Peter Weber

Bavaria's breweries have barely survived the corona crisis when they are struggling with a raw materials crisis.

Almost everything that the beer suppliers need has become more expensive.

Munich – For generations, the Unertl family in Haag in the Mühldorf district has been all about one food: wheat beer.

The brewery survived world wars, competitors opened in the neighborhood and closed again years later.

There were good times and bad.

The time is extremely challenging again.

Or in the words of master brewer Alois Unertl (45), who runs the business with his 67-year-old father: "It's all crazy.

The cost explosion is here, it's insane."

The wheat beer brewer needs several minutes to list everything that has become more expensive.

“The price of the glue for the labels has increased by 100 percent from one day to the next.

The malt has become more expensive – and I can't absolutely say that the quality has improved.” The wooden Euro pallets on which the beer crates stand cost ten euros each until recently, today it's 30 euros.

"If you can get any at all."


Breweries in the raw materials crisis: "We see wheat beer as a staple food"

A beer table set cost 90 euros before Corona, now it costs 150 euros, the standard wheat beer glass without a gold rim was 1.20 euros, now 1.90 euros.

"We are not profit-optimized," says Unertl.

"We see wheat beer as a staple food." That's why they don't want to pass their own price pressure on to customers one-to-one, despite the raw materials and Ukraine crises.

"You should raise the prices at the moment," says Unertl, "but we really don't want to, because wheat beer prices have such an emotional signal effect.

We don't want to take people's hope away."

A carrier of Unertl wheat beer currently costs 20 euros, i.e. one euro per bottle.

"We want to keep this price as long as possible," says the brewer.


Struggling with the additional costs: Alois Unertl junior and senior keep their prices stable.

© Stefan Rossmann

After Corona, the raw materials crisis follows: Beer bottles could become scarce in summer

Meanwhile, beer bottles could run out this summer, warns the German Brewers' Association.

"We see bottlenecks in the summer at the latest," says Holger Eichele, Managing Director of the Brauer-Bund, to the

picture

.

"The hotter the summer, the more difficult the situation can become." According to the Association of Private Breweries in Bavaria, the sharp rise in energy prices and a possible gas embargo or a gas supply stop from Russia would also come, says association spokesman Benedikt Meier.

Glass production requires a lot of energy, and the price of bottles has risen by 80 percent.

When it comes to beer bottles, the wheat beer brewers from Haag don't see any supply bottlenecks: "We have the tall bottles and the ancient mason's bottles with swing tops." Not too many breweries use this type of bottle anymore.

It's a tradition that literally pays off.


Brewers in the beer crisis: "The malt has become 60 to 70 percent more expensive"

For Michael Schweinberger, Managing Director of the Maisach brewery (Fürstenfeldbruck district), the bottles are the smallest problem.

"Now, in contrast to Corona times, draft beer is in demand again, the demand has increased enormously." Last year he sold 70,000 crates of beer.

Schweinberger says: "The bottles are all still in circulation."

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However, raw material and energy prices bothered him: "The malt has become 60 to 70 percent more expensive, the price of the oil with which the boilers are heated has doubled." Schweinberger still does not plan to sell the beer any time soon to make it more expensive.

“We only increased the prices last year.

Now we're just waiting until the price increases have settled."

(Stefan Sessler, Johannes Welte)

Source: merkur

All news articles on 2022-05-20

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