Blog #4
Blogs #2 and 3 dealt with aspects of the alcohol/health externality from the perspectives of the recent update by WHO of the Global Burden of Disease and the relatively high risk to health resulting from any pattern of excessive consumption of alcohol. Blog 3 explained the WFA alcohol policy that advocates both a self disciplinary approach by customers and encourages member enterprises to support industry initiatives but without either a fully defined management process or a complete strategy to deal with major risks.
Given this weak approach and acknowledging that many of us drinkers do not want to be burdened with the possible intrusion of general interventions comprising higher taxes and duties, plain packaging, health warnings and advertising bans (think tobacco) then what signals are emanating from the market? What do we know of current drinking trends and do they suggest an approaching tsunami of regulations?
The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) report #4307.0.55.001 named ‘Apparent Consumption of Alcohol’ which it publishes annually, deals with this matter. The report is not assembled out of survey data of actual consumption but rather is gathered from enterprises that hold stocks of alcoholic beverages available for sale and presumably consumption on the domestic market. If it were not for two factors the report would be a record of stocks not consumption. The first factor that makes the claim for “apparent consumption” legitimate is that the numbers have been run over a long period (since 1961) and hence trends are available. Retailers and others may err in their judgement as to the level of stock they require but all the data when consolidated generally exhibits a close match to overall market clearances and hence consumption. Inventory build and reduction cycles are known but these become evident when using consolidated data and corrections can be made. The second factor relates to the consolidation of the data that leads to a moderation of fluctuating patterns. The data covers all alcoholic beverages available in the domestic market. This is possible through the common factor of the presence of ethyl alcohol in beers, wines and spirits. The level of pure alcohol per type of drink varies but can be calculated by either weight eg grams per litre or in volume terms as in the percentage of alcohol by volume and consolidated into a total for alcoholic beverages.
The ABS report summarises both current consumption and identifies the longer-term trends. It reported in the current release (2011-12) that over the past 50 years, the proportion of pure alcohol for beers by comparison to the total for all categories decreased from,76% to 42%, wine increased from 12% to 36% and spirits (including RTDs) rose from 13%-19%.
Taking the figures for wine and basing the trend on an annual per capita basis over the period 2006-2012 consumption has risen from 3.53litres (l) to 3.80l (where the denominator is population 15 years old and over). Breaking the total into wine types reveals that for red wine over the period 2007-2012, annual consumption per capita rose from 1.75l-1.84l, white wines 1.37l-1.39l and other wines (sparkling, dessert, fortifieds and vermouth) 0.58l-0.56l.
The numbers alone, in total, hardly represent the picture of a crisis but neither do they present a complete picture. Tomorrow we can consider another factor in the equation the impact of earnings distribution on the propensity to purchase alcoholic beverages. In the meantime if you have comments or suggestions I can be reached on ian.powrie@adelaide.edu.au.
ianpowrie 