Page 24 - Winter 2018 english

Mike Costello
Mike is the Director of Business Development with Moosehead Breweries Ltd., Canada’s oldest independent brewery, founded in 1867. In addition to his current role, he has spent the past 2 decades in the alcohol beverage industry also with Molson and Corby Spirit & Wine. Contact Mike at 416-892-7932 or Mike.Costello@moosehead.ca.
The alcohol industry in Canada is constantly evolving. Changing consumer preferences, newfound product innovations, and re ned marketing techniques all work together in unison to present Canadians with a brand-new marketplace year over year. This has been especially true through 2017 and 2018, with this past year featuring changes and trends never seen before so dramatically in the industry.
STATISTICS AND FACTS
First, it is important to look at how the total alcohol industry is currently split between the various product categories. Based on a report from Statistics Canada released last May, Canadians spent $22.1 billion on alcohol annually, a rise of 3.5% from the same period earlier.1 Based on that total, $9.2 billion was spent on beer, $7 billion on wine, and $5.1 billion on spirits. An additional $800 million was spent on ciders, coolers, and other alcoholic drinks.2
These gures represent quite a dramatic jump from a decade ago, where the beer category enjoyed a 47% share of the total alcohol market, but now only make up just over 41%. Wine has been the main riser, stealing market share from those classic pints.
1 https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/statscan-alcohol-sales-1.4095446 2 https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/statscan-alcohol-sales-1.4095446 3 https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/statscan-alcohol-sales-1.4095446 4 http://industry.beercanada.com/statistics
Regarding how consumers enjoy their beverages, cans continue to be the package of choice for Canadians. Cans currently hold a 60% share of the national beer market, with bottles and kegs at 30% & 10% respectively. This is a dramatic change from half a decade ago, where those numbers were much more evenly distributed – 46% cans, 44% bottles, 10% kegs.3
A CHANGING BEER INDUSTRY
The past few years have seen dramatic changes to the alcohol space in Canada, and this is especially true for beer.
The number of operational brewing facilities across the country has increased by a whopping 17.6% from 695 in 2016 to an all-time high of 817 in 2017.4 More and more breweries, both big and small, are entering the playing eld vying to be Canadians’ top choice. This level of extreme competition has not led to an increase in national production and sales volumes, with both remaining relatively at. The former increased by only 0.3% year-over-year, with Canada achieving annual production of 22.43 million hL in 2017. That is a lot of beer being produced, but it is interesting to note that domestic sales fell, decreasing 1.5%, while import sales increased by 1.0%.
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