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17-03-2019, 07:38
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Between the wars UK beer exports trundled along at between 200,000 and 350,000 barrels annually. Which was about half the level it had been pre-WW I, when 500,000 to 650,000 barrels were exported each year.

Clearly the war was going to have an impact on exports. Especially as one of the main destination for UK exports, Belgium, had been occupied by the Germans. In addition, German U-boats made shipping anything across the Atlantic a dangerous enterprise. And in the early phases of the war British shipping in the Mediterranean was susceptible to German or Italian attacks from the air. Plus most shipping capacity was reserved for war material or essential items, such as food.

Given all these negative factors, it’s no shock that beer exports shrank considerably in the early years of the war:

Belgium appears to have been receiving supplies if British beer right up until the Germans invaded. The trade didn’t resume until a couple of years after war’s end. The quantity of beer going to British colonies dried to a trickle between 1942 and 1944.

Exports hit a nadir in 1942, a year when the war was only just starting turn in the Allies’ favour.

Not all the export markets were as large after the war as they had been before. India and the Straits Settlements, for example, were taking less than half the beer they had done pre-war. In the case of India, this was doubtless due to the withdrawal of British troops and administrators after independence in 1947. Belgium, on the other hand, imported similar quantities as pre-war. While more beer was shipped to the West Indies after the war than before it.

In the 1950s, UK exports stabilised at around 250,000 barrels a year – similar to what they had been in 1939. Though the destinations changed, as the British Empire slowly withered away and with it the former colonial markets.




UK beer exports by destination 1937 - 1943


Destination
1937
1939
1940
1941
1942
1943


Egypt
12,960
26,597
28,857
28,519
3,658
45


Irish Free State
119,763
52,081
35,306
25,843
16,730
14,810


British W. Africa
9,432
12,468
13,873
22,328
15,544
19,161


India & Straits Settlements
75,349
63,186
69,963
62,260
11,523
638


Brit. West India
10,298
10,925
8,499
8,081
5,082
6,629


Belgium
40,637
29,140
13,080





Other Countries
72,318
89,577
97,188
78,521
42,259
65,736


Total
340,757
283,974
266,766
225,552
94,796
107,019


Source:


Brewers' Almanack 1955, page 57.






UK beer exports by destination 1944 - 1949


Destination
1944
1945
1946
1947
1948
1949


Egypt
4,804
2,966
12,536
12,709
7,587
6,999


Irish Free State
4,878
128
221
3,280

6,201


British W. Africa
10,225
1,190
1,574
5,797

34,626


India & Straits Settlements
2,506
38,333
69,278
8,130
27,538
27,750


Brit. West India
1,701
7
251
1,045

14,009


Belgium





33,786


Other Countries
53,483
78,732
97,860
71,642
169,973
130,756


Total
77,597
130,443
187,418
109,680
205,098
254,127


Source:


Brewers' Almanack 1955, page 57.




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