World: All the brewers of the world produced 1,598,088,000 hl of beer in 2005

In 2005 beer output increased year-on-year by 3 %, or by 45.8 million hl up to 1.598 billion hl, 2006 Barth Report has recently posted.

Of that amount, China contributed by far the largest share, with an increase of 15.2 million hl. In Europe, Ukraine (+6.4m hl.) and Russia (+4.0m hl.) provided with the strong growth, while the UK, on the other hand, registered a significant drop of 2.9 million hl.

The increase of beer output in America is accounted for in Brazil (+4.4m hl.) and Mexico (+4m hl.). In the USA, output fell by 2.2m hl.

A drop of 2.1m hl in Japan slightly reduced the above-average growth in Asia compared with the rest of the world. Africa shows the highest growth of all continents in percentage terms, with 4.9 %.

21 July, 2006