The price of a pint of beer in Great Britain for the first time has exceeded £8, when its price has increased by 72% since 2008, says the Daily Mail. As the newspaper notes, the rise in prices is mainly the result of the rising cost of ingredients due to the conflict in Ukraine, as well as high inflation.
It’s time to shed a tear over a mug: the price of a pint of beer in Britain has exceeded £8 for the first time, says the Daily Mail.
In 2008 drinkers paid on average £2.3 for a pint, but a spike in the price of ingredients this year has pushed the price up to £3.95. Thus prices have risen by 72% since the financial crisis in 2008.
The highest price per pint was recorded in London at £8.06, while the cheapest pint – just £1.79 – was found in Lancashire. A total of 90,000 bars and pubs in the UK were analysed.
Meanwhile the industry fears that customers may stop coming to pubs if the price of the drink reaches too high.
Brewers expect that the celebrations in honor of the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee will bring them considerable revenue: the British Beer and Pub Association estimates that Britons will order more than 90 million pints over the long weekend.
Conflict in Ukraine, a major wheat supplier, has led to a rise in grain prices, which could affect pubs.
Barley, a key ingredient in beer, has not escaped this fate. Analysts at research firm Bernstein believe this is a “big problem” for brewers. They calculate that “in a realistic worst-case scenario, malting barley inflation will be 70 percent this year.”
In this context, Fernando Tennenbaum, chief financial officer of Anheuser-Busch InBev, the world’s largest brewer, which produces Budweiser and Corona, warned that although inflation has risen, beer prices have so far lagged behind it and “demand is very high”.
City Pub Group chairman Cleve Watson noted that the cost of ingredients has risen by 10 per cent:
“Wage inflation has probably reached 7 per cent and electricity inflation is 100 per cent, so the cost of a pint of beer has probably risen by 12-13 per cent.”
Meanwhile, Watson said his company’s prices rose by no more than 6 per cent in December. He also added that prices will remain unchanged this year:
“We just want people to go back to the pubs.”
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