Shortage of beer bottles affects Belgian brewers

There is a structural shortage of beer bottles on the European market. The scarcity that already existed before the Covid crisis only became worse last year as brewers switched en masse from barrels destined for the hospitality industry to bottles for supermarkets.

Improvisation

Especially smaller breweries feel the shortage at first hand. Alain Coutteau, the owner of Struise Brouwers, received his latest order with a considerable delay. “That is why we had to improvise in May. Only a few days ago, we finally received enough bottles, allowing us to bottle normally again”, he says in the Belgian newspaper De Tijd.

Alain De Laet from brewery Huyghe confirms the scarcity on the bottle market. To get around the problem, the company has been sourcing from Russia for several years now. “Moreover, immediately after the Covid outbreak in March of last year, we rented a warehouse in Antwerp, where we stored additional stocks of bottles. We could see the storm was coming. As a result, we are not facing any problems for the time being.”

Takeover wave

Although the Covid crisis exacerbated the shortage – the closure of the hospitality industry increased the demand for bottled beer – the real cause of the problem must be sought elsewhere. “Glass factories disappeared all over Europe because there was an oversupply of beer bottles ten years ago. This triggered a wave of takeovers, leaving only three major producers,” explains Christophe Bossut from Axaglass.

In recent years, the demand for glass bottles has increased steadily. This was due to the growth of the European beer and wine industry, but also because milk is increasingly being bottled in glass containers again. However, over that period, glass manufacturers hardly added any production capacity. Only the German company Wiegand-Glas recently opened a new factory.

Do not overestimate the problem

Large brewers like AB InBev and Heineken seem to be hardly affected by the bottle shortage for the time being. Those companies get priority from the bottle producers. Haacht Brewery also took its precautions, says spokesperson Lien Meeus. “There has been a shortage of beer bottles for several years, and we have anticipated this in our contracts.”