UK Beer Exports 1937 - 1949

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.