Domestic tax paid estimates from the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau shared by the Beer Institute (BI) reveal a slow start to 2022.
U.S. brewers shipped 12.3 million barrels of product in January 2022, a 6.2% decline (-815,000 barrels) compared to January 2021’s 13.1 million barrels, according to the estimates shared by the BI.
January 2022’s volume decline marked the second consecutive month of shipment declines.
Danelle Kosmal, VP of research for the BI, shared some context behind January 2022’s shipment number:
“We saw strong shipments at the end of 2021, and expected that to slow down a lot in January. Even more so, imports (in particular Mexican imports) were driving end-of-year growth for shipments in 2021. Domestic barrels, on the other hand, slowed a lot in the back half of 2021. We see that continuing at the start of 2022. Domestic tax paid estimates are down for six of the seven past months. Remember that we are still also working with some unusual comps from late 2020 and early 2021.”
Looking at the past four Januarys, the January 2022 shipment number was also down compared to the 12.457 million barrels shipped in January 2020 and the 12.4 million barrels shipped in January 2019 — both months prior to the COVID-19 lockdowns.
February’s domestic tax paid estimates are expected to be released on March 30.
In 2021, U.S. brewers shipped 169,154,000 barrels of beer, roughly flat at -0.1% (-233,691 barrels) compared to 2020’s 169,387,691 barrels shipped.