The Spanish Association of Independent Craft Brewers (AECAI), has presented the first Technical Report on Craft and Independent Beer in Spain, carried out in collaboration with the company and specialized consultancy Beer Events (organizer of the Barcelona Beer Festival) and the Innolabs Social Foundation. Through contact with more than 400 craft breweries in Spain and taking information from them over the past few months, and in an obvious context of a health pandemic, some of the data and conclusions reflected in this report are those that are broken down below.
Continuous growth of the artisan sector until the pandemic
The data from the Craft and Independent Beer Report shows a growth of 79.58% in the production of craft beer from 2015 to 2019, going from 12.4 million liters to 22, 4 million.
This continuous growth that the sector had been experiencing in recent years was slowed down during the 2020 financial year by the pandemic, with a decrease of 21.89% compared to the previous year, reaching 17 .4 million litres.
Market share of craft beer in Spain
The share of craft beer production over the total beer in the country was 0.5%, “a small figure but it shows the enormous growth margin that the brewery sector has in Spain craft, which has also been able to influence the entire beer market in recent years towards the proliferation of more variety and quality in products”, said Javier Donate, president of AECAI.
On the other hand , the Report also reflects that, however, the market share of craft beer (understood as the percentage of sales over the global turnover of the sector) reached 1.1%, given that the sale price per liter is higher in craft production to that of conventional beer.
Breweries in rural settings
Nearly 9 out of 10 craft breweries are located outside the provincial capitals (87%), many of them also located in rural areas. "This represents a clear opportunity for economic development in the so-called Empty Spain," says Donate, "about which we have been told so many times in recent times. The small breweries are helping to settle the population and provide jobs in small population centers, on many occasions in towns with few inhabitants.”