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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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