Industry on track to cut alcohol units by 1 billion

The UK’s drinks industry is on track to achieve its promise of removing one billion units of alcohol from the market by the end of 2015.

The UK drinks trade is on track to meet its pledge of reducing alcohol units available on the market by one billion, report claims

According to the Department of Health’s first interim report for the project, called the Responsibility Deal Alcohol Network, signatories removed 253 units of alcohol from the UK market between 2011-12 by lowering the abv content of products sold.

This represents a quarter of the billion unit reduction that signatories have committed to achieving over the four years to end 2015.

Meanwhile, a total of 311 million units of alcohol from the UK market due to a decline in volume sales.

However, the average abv of spirits offset the overall decrease in abv content, increasing 42 million units. Beer was the driver of the general decrease, contributing 252 million units towards the billion-unit pledge.

The average ABV across the market as a whole increased by 0.05 percentage points to 7.31%. This was the result of a shift in market share away from beer and cider towards wine and spirits, the volumes of which rose 0.6% and 0.3% respectively.

Henry Ashworth, Portman Group chief executive and chair of the Responsibility Deal Alcohol Network, said: “It is good news that producers and retailers have already removed 253 million units of alcohol from the UK market and are on track to remove 1 billion units by the end of 2015.

“This report shows the first year results of this four year pledge so it is important that we stay focused on continuing this industry-wide innovation.”

Companies which have signed up to the project include Asda, Bacardi, Diageo, Marks & Spencer, Pernod Ricard and Tesco.

The Department of Health is expected to produce an annual interim report on the project’s progress, with a final report expected in 2016.