Lager lout? No thanks, lager's out

Following on from Scottish & Newcastle’s recent announcement of a fall in lager sales due to the bad weather, latest research from MINTEL suggests that for the wider lager market a downward trend in sales may not be just a Summer blip.MINTEL forecasts that following a 5% decline in volume sales since 2005, the lager market will fall by a further 8% to 2012 to reach 3.65 billion litres – some 307 million litres down on this year’s sales (3.95 billion litres in 2007). This means that the average lager drinker will knock back around 11 litres or some 19 pints less in 2012 than they do today.