The Beer Institute has released their estimate of domestic tax paid shipments by beer brewers for February 2024 which shows shipments of 11,900,000 barrels for the month, an encouraging increase of 7.9% compared to February 2023 removals of 11,024,243. It follows an increase of 1.8% in January, which indicates that the huge declines of last year may be leveling off.
Beer has only one month in 2023 in which tax paid shipments were up over the previous year. Shipments were down 6.5% for the full year of 2023. Those low comps will make it easier to show growth numbers this year, which is up 2.4% through February.
Meanwhile, the National Beer Wholesalers Association (NBWA) released the Beer Purchasers’ Index (BPI) for March 2024 which was also encouraging.
“After a quiet start to the beer industry’s year, March saw distributor ordering levels kick into gear as the beer purchasers’ index rose to 53 — the first reading above the expansionary benchmark (50) in 2024 and the highest March BPI reading since 2021,” according the NBWA press release.
“The combination of readings for the BPI (53) and at-risk inventory (47) measures, along with increased year-over-year ordering volumes in six of seven measured segments, points to a significant shift toward a more positive outlook for the beer industry in 2024.”
The craft segment index was at 36 for March 2024 and continues to show contraction. But the current reading is significantly higher than the March 2023 reading at 28, which may indicate that craft declines have leveled off.