Never before have German breweries sold as much beer to Russia in the months of January to March as in 2023.
After evaluating figures from the Federal Statistical Office, INSIDE calculated that in Q1/23 almost 550,000 hl of beer were exported from Germany to Russia. For comparison: In the pre-corona year 2019 it was 275,000 hl in the same period, i.e. exactly half. In Q1 of 2020, 380,000 hl were exported to Russia, in 2021 around 350,000 hl and in 2022, the year of the Russian attack on Ukraine, almost 400,000 hl from January to March. Exports to Russia plummeted in April 2022, but recovered again by August 2022 at the latest.
With this year's result for Q1, Russia has consolidated its second place among the exporting nations for beer behind Italy (just under 760,000 hl) and now well ahead of China (around 430,000 hl). China has not been able to defend the very high level of exports from 2019 since then and has dropped significantly to third place.
