Serbia among leading exporters of beer from third countries to EU

The European Union produces nearly 81 liters of beer per capita, each fifth bottle is filled in Germany, and when it comes to the market of beer from third countries, Serbia is the second biggest exporter of beer to the EU after Mexico, Eurostat announced on August 3, on the occasion of the International Beer Day.

The International Beer Day has been celebrated since 2008 on each first Friday in August in more than 200 cities worldwide.

In 2017, over 41 billion liters of beer containing alcohol were produced in the EU, 2.5 billion liters more than in 2016. In addition, the EU produced nearly 900 million liters of beer which contained less than 0.5% alcohol or had no alcohol content at all.

Two-thirds of the beer containing alcohol produced in the EU came from six Member States. Germany was the top producer in 2017 with a production of 8.1 billion liters (or 20% of the EU total production). Germany was followed by the United Kingdom (14%), Poland (10%), the Netherlands and Spain (9% each) and Belgium (6%).

Compared with 2016, the Netherlands (+48%) recorded the highest increase in the production of beer containing alcohol, followed by the United Kingdom (+14%) and Portugal (+11%).

In contrast, the production of beer in Greece fell by -9%, followed by Slovakia (-5%), Bulgaria and Lithuania (both - 4%).

The Netherlands exported 1.9 billion liters of beer containing alcohol in 2017. This made it the largest beer exporter of all EU Member States, ahead of Belgium and Germany (both 1.6 billion liters).

The United States was by far the main destination for beer exports to non-EU countries (1.1 billion liters of beer containing alcohol exported there in 2017, or 31% of total extra-EU exports of beer). The United States was followed by China (15%) and Canada (6%).

The internal market for beers containing alcohol that are not produced in the EU is marginal. However, when importing from non EU-countries, EU Member States favored Mexican beer (52% of all extra-EU imports of beer in 2017), ahead of Serbian beer (12%).

In 2017, Serbia exported 48 million liters of beer to the EU.

EUROSTAT

production of beer

export of beer

export of beer to the EU

International Beer Day

export of beer from Serbia