Assobirra: 'Falling consumption, reduce excise duties in the budget law'

The summer does not seem to have brought back the upward trend in beer consumption, already rebounding from a not brilliant 2023, so much so that Assobirra returns to denouncethe linkbetween the end of excise tax concessions and the drop in sales and to call for a return to the pre-2023 situation.

"The last 18 months have confirmed the existence of an inverse correlation between the increase in excise duties and the reduction in the competitiveness of domestic production," say Assobirra, "and in the first half of 2024, we are concerned about the strong increase in imports from Germany, where taxation is four times lower than in Italy, making companies that want to export to our country more competitive.

In view of the approval of the Budget Law 2025, AssoBirra therefore asks the government to reduce excise duty on beer by 2 cents and restore discounts for craft breweries up to 60 thousand hectolitres. "With this measure," explains the president of AssoBirra, Alfredo Pratolongo, "excise duties would drop to 2.97 euro per hectolitre degree Plato, i.e. the level before the last increase, considering that the beer market has entered a contraction and lost over 5%. Today more than ever, we believe it is necessary to give certainty to entrepreneurs who want to invest and thus put an end to the adoption of provisional measures".

Before the pandemic, the brewing sector had embarked on a positive growth trend, characterised by the development of new craft breweries, large industrial investments, the launch of new beers and the commercial push of historic Italian brands. These factors had favoured an increasing use of Italian agricultural raw materials and thus the adoption of recipes linked to the territory. After the pandemic, having exhausted the rebound in 2022, inflationary pressures and the erosion of purchasing power abruptly reversed the trend: in 2023, production fell to 17.4 million hectolitres, marking a -5.02% drop compared to 2022, national consumption stopped at 21.2 million hectolitres, compared to 22.5 million twelve months earlier, a contraction of 5.85%.
The first half of 2024 confirms this alarm bell: domestic production and the domestic market continue to suffer. Consumption, which is virtually flat, is in fact fuelled mainly by the increase in beers produced outside Italy (with imports rising by 10.2%).

'After the first excise tax increase in January 2023, the sector entered a contraction that continued after the second increase in January 2024,' Pratolongo explains. In the first half of 2024, the data show an increase in imports from European countries with taxation up to four times lower than in Italy, allowing exporting companies to be more competitive, since price, especially in a context of reduced purchasing power, has a significant impact'.