Cuba has become the second most important market for Spanish beer exports, only behind Portugal.
The island imports 20% of the beer that Spain sells outside its borderswhile the first place is occupied by the Portuguese nation with 22%, as revealed by the Spanish press based on the latest Socioeconomic Report on the sector, presented this week by the Brewers of Spain employers’ association.
For the first time in 2023, Cuba overtook the United Kingdom and France in Spanish beer import figures.
“The rise of Cuba as the second destination for Spanish beer exports is due to a combination of factors”said Jacobo Olalla Marañón, general director of the association that brings together almost all of the Spanish producers of that drink.
Olalla Marañón attributes this to “a greater commercial openness in Cuba after the flexibility of imports that since 2020 has allowed the importation of beer and other various goods,” and to the extensive presence of Spanish hotel companies on the island.
According to the report, Spanish beer exports to Cuba have experienced a sustained increase between 2021 and 2023.
In 2021 they grew by 62%; in 2022 they shot up another 196%; while in 2023 they grew an additional 193%until exceeding 800,000 hectoliters.
The data is still overwhelming in the case of a country that suffers from a chronic shortage of basic foods, a country in which the population is going through a serious food crisis and where putting a plate of food on the table for ordinary Cubans is increasingly complicated.
The data is not strange if one takes into account the deficient production of Cuban beer brands, mainly the iconic Cristal and Bucanero, which has been in decline for years.
Added to the eternal shortage of raw materials is the no less eternal problem of obsolete machinery.
Despite this, the recent association between the state-owned Cuba-Ron and the Dutch company Swinkels Family Brewers led to the creation of a new factory in the Mariel Special Development Zone, which has begun to produce the new brand of beer “Parranda” .
At the beginning of this year, the increase in tariffs on beer imports made headlines with the aim of promoting domestic production. However, this measure has also increased the price of imported beers, affecting both consumers and private businesses that depend on these imports.
