Effect of WW II on the Dutch brewing industry

Curse Peter Symons. He's got another document digitised which is going to cost me weeks of work.

It's called ""De Nederlandse Brouwindustrie in Cijfers" ("The Dutch brewing industry in numbers") and is stiffed full of useful numbers, including ones covering the war years. Providing me with so much information, I'm contemplating ripping the section on Dutch brewing oit and making it a separate volume. "Blutzkrieg! Vol, 3", I suppose.

Here's the first bit I've written using the new data.

Compared to the devastating effect of WW I on Belgian brewing – when hundreds of breweries were stripped of their copper by the Germans and never reopened – Holland didn’t fare too badly. Breweries weren’t looted and continued to brew until the raw materials ran out.

Only 16 breweries – all very small – closed during the war years. Compared to 36 in the first nine years of peace. The closure in 1949 if a brewery which was responsible for 5.3% of Dutch beer output has to be van Vollenhoven. It accounted for over half the production capacity lost between 1938 and 1954.

Dutch breweries 1938 - 1954
year	working breweries	closed during the year	cumulative total of closed breweries	production share of closed breweries	cumulative total of closed breweries
1938	99	—	—	—	—
1939	98	1	1	0.0126	0.0126
1940	98	—	1	—	0.0126
1941	95	3	4	0.0490	0.0616
1942	93	2	6	0.0079	0.0695
1943	92	1	7	0.0113	0.0808
1944	87	5	12	0.2811	0.3619
1945	83	4	16	0.8939	1.2558
1946	79	4	20	0.3153	1.5711
1947	76	3	23	0.1511	1.7222
1948	72	4	27	0.2547	1.9769
1949	66	6	33	5.2927	7.2696
1950	60	6	39	0.6670	7.9366
1951	54	6	45	0.8456	8.7822
1952	50	4	49	0.6478	9.4300
1953	47	5	52	0.7659	10.1959
1954	47	—	52	—	10.1959
Source:
De Nederlandse Brouwindustrie in Cijfers, by Dr. H. Hoelen, Centraal Brouwerij Kantoor, 1955, page 15, held at the Amsterdam City Archives.