Global beer sales fell 1.6 per cent in 2016

AUSSIES are drinking less beer but more wine and spirits. Meanwhile, cider’s popularity has peaked and alcopops are coming back like it’s 2007.

Mixed drinks are making a comeback in Australia.

BEER is having a bad time.

Australians are drinking less of our national drink but more wine and spirits, according to data from International Wine and Spirits Research, a London-based industry group.

Alcohol sales down under eked out modest growth of 0.16 per cent in 2016, an improvement on the five-year average decline of 0.84 per cent.

Beer was the only category to go backwards, posting a decline of 0.74 per cent, although it was an improvement on the five-year average of a 1.15 per cent decline.

The strongest performing categories were spirits, which saw a 2.25 per cent increase, up from the five-year average of 0.79 per cent, and wine, which was up 2.2 per cent, compared with the five-year average of 0.18 per cent.

Cider sales grew by 1.54 per cent, but that was a sharp slowdown on the five-year average of 7 per cent growth a year.

Mixed drinks, meanwhile, swung back into fashion, with sales growing by a modest 0.4 per cent, after five years of average annual declines of 3.45 per cent.

Globally, total alcohol sales fell 1.3 per cent, led by a 1.8 per cent decline in beer sales. The 1.3 per cent contraction was markedly steeper than the five-year global average decline of 0.3 per cent, while the 1.8 per cent decline in beer was also well above the five-year average decline of 0.6 per cent.

ISWR magazine editor Alexander Smith told the Financial Times the drop was surprising given the improving global economy. Global gross domestic product rose 3.1 per cent last year and is expected to rise 3.6 per cent this year, according to the International Monetary Fund, which would typically correlate with higher alcohol consumption.

“That, allied with the growing global population of legal drinking age consumers, should, theoretically, have led to growing global alcohol consumption, but it didn’t,” Mr Smith told the Financial Times.

The fall was largely blamed on economic weakness in some emerging markets and increasing regulations. Sales of sprits held largely steady at 0.3 per cent growth, although global vodka sales fell 4.3 per cent largely due to a 9.3 per cent fall in recession-hit Russia.

Sales of cider, which has been growing in popularity for several years, went backwards by 1.5 per cent last year due to a 15.2 per cent drop in US sales.

ISWR said the beer drop was mainly due to weakness in China, which is the world’s biggest beer market by volume, but was also affected by other major economies. Beer sales fell 4.2 per cent in China, 5.3 per cent in Brazil and 7.8 per cent in Russia.

One bright spot was gin, with sales increasing by 3.7 per cent globally, largely led by strong European sales. Drinks giant Diageo, which owns Tanqueray gin, told the Financial Times per capita consumption of alcohol in the developed world had been dropping for three decades.

“However, there is a clear and sustained trend of consumers drinking better — not more,” the company said. “This is supported in the IWSR data with the growth of global spirits, particularly whisky, gin and tequila.”

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