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Canadians are buying more alcohol, including wine and beer, though less and less of the beer is being sold by domestic producers such as Molson Inc. Liquor purchases rose 6 percent to C$15.4 billion ($12.6 billion) in the year ended March 2003, led by imported beers. The average Canadian bought the equivalent of 241 bottles of beer, 17- and-a-half bottles of wine and 7.5 liters (2 gallons) of spirits, Statistics Canada said. Yesterday Molson said its share of Canada's beer market slipped 2.8 percentage points to 42.4 percent in the latest quarter, reflecting business lost to discount brands such as Lakeport Beverage Corp.'s Honey Lager and foreign ones including InBev's Stella Artois. Imported beer sales rose 35 percent.
Canadians bought close to twice as much wine as they did 10 years earlier, helping sustain domestic vintners such as Vincor International Inc. of Mississauga, Ontario. Sales of imported beer rose more than 10 times faster than domestic beer to C$960 million ($787 million). Ontarians were most likely to buy imported beer, which accounted for almost a fifth of sales in the province, followed by people in British Columbia and Quebec. Nationally, imported beer represented 12 percent of beer sales. |