The Czech Republic: Canned beer production increases four-fold in the past 20 years

Czech canned beer production has increased four-fold in the past 20 years due to growing exports and rising production of beer mixes, according to data presented to CTK by the Czech Beer and Malt Association.

Statistics show that back in 1994 canned beer output reached 200,000 hectolitres but the figure climbed up above the level of one million hectolitres by 2013.

“Innovation and export can be behind the increase,” head of the association Vladimir Balach told the Czech News Agency.

The share of canned beer abroad is markedly higher than in the Czech Republic.

Compared with the EU where beer cans make up about 30 percent of production volumes, the Czech share of total production is about 20 percent.

Cans constitute about 10 percent of beer sales in Czech stores, more than two-thirds are made up by beer in glass bottles and about one-fifth by beer in plastic bottles.

The canned beer history in the Czech Republic is much shorter, compared with the USA and Europe where beer cans appeared in 1935 and in the second half of the 1930s (Germany, France, Great Britain), respectively, said Pivovar Staropramen spokesman Pavel Barvík. They, however, became largely popular at the turn of the 1950s and the 1960s.

Czech breweries started using cans in the 1990s but canned beer was becoming increasingly popular only in the years 2010 to 2012. A new generation of beer drinkers who enjoy cans has grown up, said Barvík. On the one hand, cans are practical but on the other hand, drinking from cans is more difficult and worse in terms of hygiene, said Barvík.

28 January, 2015