Romania, EU's eighth largest beer producer in 2019

Romania was the eighth largest beer producer among the 27 EU member states in 2019, according to data released on Friday by the European Statistical Office (Eurostat).

Last year, over 34 billion litres of beer containing alcohol were produced in the EU, equivalent to around 77 litres per inhabitant.

In addition, in 2019 the EU produced 1.4 billion litres of beer which contained less than 0.5% alcohol or had no alcohol content at all.

Among the EU member states, Germany was the top producer in 2019 with a production of 8.0 billion litres (or 23% of the EU total production). Germany was followed by Poland and Spain (each 3.9 bn litres produced, or 11%), the Netherlands (2.5 bn litres, or 7%), Belgium (2.4 bn litres, or 7%; 2017 data), France (2.0 bn litres, or 6%), Czechia (1.9 bn litres, or 6%), and Romania (1.73 bn litres).

Compared with 2018, Lithuania recorded the largest increase in the production of beer containing alcohol (+7%), followed by Spain (+6%) and Italy (+5%).

In contrast, the production of beer in the Netherlands fell by 9%, in Latvia by 7% and in Slovakia by 6%.

The main destinations for beer exports to non-EU countries were the United States (911 million litres, 22%) and the United Kingdom (825 million litres, 20%). They were followed by China (364 million litres, 9%), Russia (258 million litres, 6%), Canada (193 million litres, 5%), South Korea (184 million litres, 4%), South Africa (108 million tonnes, 3%), Switzerland (98 million litres, 2%), Australia (92 million litres, 2%) and Taiwan (86 million litres, 2%).

When importing from non-EU countries, member states favoured British (278 million litres, or 47% of all extra-EU imports of beer in 2019) and Mexican beer (125 million litres, 21%), ahead of Serbian beer (61 million litres, 10%), Belarusian beer (33 million litres, 6%), US beer (19 million litres, 3%), Ukrainian beer (15 million litres, 2%), Chinese beer (13 million litres, 2%) and Russian beer (9 million litres, 2%).

The Eurostat statistics marks today's International Beer Day, celebrated each year on the first Friday of August.