InnBrew: Catalonia's craft beer sector shows its professional potential

On 22 July, InnBrew, The Brewers Convention, the first B2B event for craft beer professionals, was held at La Farga Centre d'Activitats in L'Hospitalet de Llobregat. Organised by Barcelona Beer Festival, the event made a successful debut with more than a thousand attendees, including producers, distributors, hospitality professionals, retailers and others. 

As Mikel Rius, co-director of InnBrew, stressed, the fair's success shows that "the craft beer sector is mature and strong enough to have its own fair, so we can already start thinking about running it again". Mikel Rius, accompanied by Ramon Sentmartí, managing director of Prodeca, opened the event, which featured 35 stands in the InnShow area — an exhibition space with manufacturer, distributor and association brands — and hosted more than 20 talks and round tables as part of the InnTalks. 

The state of craft beer in Catalonia

Catalonia's craft beer sector has a dynamic, growing business base. There are currently 107 craft breweries operating in Catalonia, 10 fewer than the previous year, halting uninterrupted growth since 2007 — a fall attributable to the Covid-19 crisis. The figures come from the 5th Technical Report on the State of Craft Beer, produced by the Guild of Craft and Natural Beer Producers in collaboration with Barcelona Beer Festival. 

The sector as a whole produced 3.5 million litres in 2020, which represents a
fall of almost 30% on 2019 output, when
5 million litres were brewed. The health and social crisis caused by the pandemic is obviously behind
this drop in production. The months of home lockdown and
prevention measures in hospitality (particularly tough in Catalonia) have been a major setback
for small breweries.

By company type, the sector has 55 breweries producing less than 24,000 litres a year, accounting for 15% of output, while the three largest breweries, each producing more than 200,000 litres a year, account for 34% of total production. 

In 2020, 68 breweries (75%  of the total) had an online shop, compared with just 19 the year before. The pandemic has developed this direct sales channel and online sales now account for 8%. 

The more than 3.5 million litres produced by the country's craft breweries account for a 0.7% share of total beer production. Given craft beer's higher market value compared with industrial beer, turnover of €37.1 million represents a 1.5% market share.

Craft beer in Catalonia generated 269 direct jobs at the breweries. Compared with 2019 that means 98 jobs lost, a 26% fall in job-creating capacity. A third of these will be hard to recover (they relate to brewery closures) and the rest are expected to return as pandemic restrictions ease. To this should be added all the other jobs along the value chain: farming, distribution and final point of sale.