Polish Beer Market Shrinks for Eighth Consecutive Year as Retail Prices Rise
Poland’s beer market contracted by more than 7.5 million hectolitres between 2018 and 2025, an industry group said. Retail beer prices have risen by more than 40%, while alcohol-free beer sales recorded double-digit growth in the first half of 2025.
Market loses more than 7.5 million hectolitres
Poland’s beer market has contracted for an eighth consecutive year, extending a decline that is putting pressure on breweries and their suppliers. Between 2018 and 2025, the market shrank by more than 7.5 million hectolitres, according to a statement from the Union of Brewing Industry Employers cited in a BNS report published by Ūkininko patarėjas.
The industry group said the lost volume was equivalent to the combined annual production of three medium-sized breweries. The comparison illustrates the scale of the reduction facing producers: the decline is not a temporary fluctuation in monthly sales but a sustained contraction that has removed substantial demand from the Polish market.
Lower beer volumes can affect the full production chain, including breweries, packaging suppliers and providers of brewing inputs. For producers with significant fixed costs, a smaller market also increases the importance of capacity use, product mix and pricing decisions. The source did not provide individual brewery production figures or identify planned closures.
Retail prices rise by more than 40%
Bartłomiej Morzycki, general director of the Union of Brewing Industry Employers, described the situation facing Poland’s brewing industry as difficult. He said economic factors were playing an important role because beer is highly sensitive to price and its retail price has increased by more than 40% in recent years.
That increase gives consumers a stronger incentive to reduce purchases, change brands or choose different beverage categories. For breweries, raising prices can help offset higher costs per unit, but it can also deepen the volume decline in a price-sensitive market. Producers therefore face pressure on both sales volumes and their ability to pass costs through to customers.
Alcohol-free beer moves against the wider decline
Consumer preferences are also changing. Morzycki pointed to the growing popularity of NoLo products—alcohol-free and low-alcohol beverages—and the broader “Better for You” trend. He said these trends were increasingly shaping purchasing habits among Polish consumers.
Alcohol-free beer was a clear growth segment in 2025. Sales increased by 16.2% in the first half of the year, the union said. In June alone, sales jumped by 30.1% compared with the same month a year earlier. These figures contrast with the prolonged contraction of the overall beer market and indicate that demand is shifting between product categories rather than moving uniformly across the sector.
For breweries, the difference between the headline market decline and alcohol-free growth makes portfolio composition increasingly important. Companies able to expand in NoLo products may capture part of the changing demand, although the available figures do not show whether growth in alcohol-free beer is large enough to offset losses in conventional beer. Suppliers of ingredients, cans, bottles and production equipment will also be watching whether the category’s expansion translates into new capacity or mainly replaces output on existing lines.
