Photo: Flickr / julián
A growing demand for crate beers in recent years appears to defy the trend of declining alcohol consumption rates in Aotearoa.
The Swappa Crate has been around in New Zealand for more than 100 years, and is commonly found in student flats, sports clubs, and farm sheds.
The wooden box, holding 12 745ml bottles of beer, requires a deposit on your first purchase; when it is returned with the empty bottles, subsequent crates come at the cost of the beer only. Meanwhile, the bottles are washed, refilled and sent back to the stores.
The Swappa Crate scheme is run by the Associated Bottlers Company, or ABC, which is jointly owned by the country's two largest breweries: Lion and DB.
ABC general manager Philip Barlow said the demand for crate bottles reached its peak in the 1970s, but then began to decline with the rise of kegs and cans.
"But from 2015 we actually have been seeing a bit of a growth," Barlow said.
He said other than in 2020, with liquor stores having to close during lockdowns, sales had been steadily increasing year-on-year.
A spokesperson for Lion said its crates were growing around 3 percent volume growth year on year, with the on-premise channel driving most of that thanks to a strong presence of the 745ml bottles in sports clubs.
That bucks the trend of beer consumption in New Zealand in recent years, which has slowly been declining.
The latest Stats NZ data shows the total volume of beer available in 2023 fell 4.4 percent compared with 2022.
Crates have grown in popularity despite a trend in reducing beer consumption. Photo: 123RF
Since 2017, there's also been a shift in market preference regarding the strength of beers, with the majority sold now sitting between 4.35-5 percent ABV, overtaking the sales of those in the alcohol bracket below. All of the crate beer brands available sit in that lower bracket, at around 4 percent ABV.
So why is the popularity of crate beers increasing?
Philip Barlow said there were two main reasons.
"The green ethic and the fact you're buying refillables, with reusing the best form of recycling [is one], however, there's [also] a financial benefit to using crates in that it is a cheap way to buy beer," Barlow said.
"They're not the boutique type beers, but we have a very loyal customer base."
He said sales tended to be strong in regional New Zealand, though the South Island had a particularly good showing, having returned more crates in 2023 than in previous years.
While Swappa Crates have always had a reliable market in regional New Zealand, the introduction of Crate Day in 2009 saw the large bottles gain more publicity.
Crate Day was started by commercial radio station The Rock, with those taking part encouraged to consume a crate beer with friends on the first Saturday in December.
Barlow said ABC was never involved in the promotion of the event, and it had unfortunately taken on a life of its own, with The Rock ending the promotion in 2019.
"The idea was to share a crate with your mates over a barbecue, but now it's turned into a bit of a binge drinking thing; it sort of developed into something that it wasn't intended to be."
Barlow said the growth in crate beer demand seems unrelated to the event, and both Lion and DB have always distanced themselves from it and promoted responsible drinking.
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