China is the biggest consumer of alcoholic drinks in the world…They took that title away from the United States in 2011, and have never looked back. They are also on course to become the world’s largest beer market by value this year…and the world’s beer industry is watching in awe.
Let’s start with the fact that the Chinese are ENORMOUS beer drinkers.
In 2015 alone they drank almost two times the amount of beer that Americans consumed according to Euromonitor a leading a market research firm that watches these kinds of things.
China is also home to the world’s most popular beer that most beer fans have never heard of!
Snow Beer, a super non-premium 4% lager that’s almost exclusively sold in China has been crowned as the bestselling beer in the world. And most industry-watchers struggle to get their hands around the reality that Snow grew a mind-blowing 473% over the past decade!
And it’s not just beers like Snow that the Chinese are consuming, craft beers are becoming increasingly popular over there.
Donnie Everts, the Vice President of International Development for World of Beer told Fox Business that “from 2010 to 2015, craft beer in China has grown in market share by about 23 percent,” which is why the American craft beer franchise will be opening a WOB outlet in Shanghai next May.
But Shanghai is just the beginning of the Tampa-based organization’s plans to ‘shanghai’ some of China’s beer dollars. World of Beer intends to open at least three more locations in the next three years.
And World of Beer’s planned incursion into China’s market place couldn’t be better timed, because the Chinese are becoming more adventuresome about the styles of beer they’re exploring.
Mainland China, which has long the domain of mass-produced lagers (like Snow Beer), is now seeing the rise of stouts among its populace, a beer style that’s NEVER been popular over there before…at least not until now.
Chinese beer drinkers are projected to consume 264 million liters of stout this year, eclipsing the US as the #1 market for the dark brew worldwide.
American beer drinkers had briefly owned the title, a crown the USA captured from the British in 2013.
But both of those country’s beer markets are now growing at a fraction of the pace in China, where according to Bloomberg, brewers like Tsingtao have benefited from a more than 10-fold growth over the last five years.
And according to recent data from Euromonitor International, Chinese demand for stouts will more than double by 2021.
So stout times in China as its beer market grows and the rest of the world watches its breathtaking rise.
World domination? Who knows? Kinda looks that way…
But ii is an amazing ride to watch, because beer’s HUGE in China nowadays and world’s beer marketers want in.