U.S. brewers shipped more than 11.1 million barrels of product in January 2023, a decline of -4.4% year-over-year (YoY), according to the Beer Institute (BI), citing domestic tax paid shipment estimates from the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau (TTB).
January 2023’s estimated decline totaled 506,663 barrels. The losses are on the heels of January 2022 when shipments declined -11.8% (-1.55 million barrels), to 11.6 million barrels. That amounts to more than 2 million fewer barrels shipped since January 2021 when U.S. brewers shipped 13.15 million barrels of product.
In 2022, full-year domestic shipments declined -4.6% YoY, to an estimated 161.5 million barrels.
Meanwhile, state shipments to wholesalers in January declined -4.2% compared to January 2022.
Danelle Kosmal, vice president of research for the BI, noted that the volume decline came amid positive dollar sales trends in off-premise retail scans.
“Given the year ago comparisons were also soft in volume performance, the latest trends are a reflection of the external pressures the beer industry currently faces,” Kosmal wrote. “That said, as we’ve seen over the past several years, there is a great deal of volatility in the numbers and trends, particularly when making month-to-month comparison.”
Kosmal shared a chart showing the 12-month downward trend possibly easing in December 2022 (-3.1%), with “slight improvement for the 12 months ending January 2023 (-2.9%).”
“While the industry is tackling many external pressures, I’m optimistic there will be improvement over the next few months compared to Q4 2022 trends,” she wrote.
Even amid monthly declines, there were “several bright spots and large states that are back in the black” in January 2023 compared to January 2022, Kosmal wrote.
“California was the largest contributor to overall barrel growth (+5.8% and up by more than 85K barrels), followed by New Jersey (+6.7%), Michigan (+4.9%), and Colorado (+3.9%),” she added. “Texas and Ohio, on the other hand, were down -6.0% and -8.7% respectively, and were the two biggest contributors of declines, although 39 other states also experienced declines compared to January 2022.”
February 2023 numbers are expected to be released on April 6.