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Sales up at Swedish state liquor stores

Sales at Sweden's state-run alcohol retail monopoly Systembolaget, measured in terms of the amount of goods sold, increased by 9.2 percent in the first seven months of 2009 compared to the same period last year.

Published: 14 August 2009 17:14 CEST

Sales up at Swedish state liquor stores

Alcohol-free drinks accounted for the largest increase, up 16.9 percent on the same period last year.

Sales of wine also saw a sharp rise of 10.9 percent, followed by strong beer at 7.6 percent, and spirits at 6.6 percent.

Systembolaget said in a statement that its sales have been on the increase for some time, a development that could be partially explained by the global downturn as fewer Swedes travel abroad to stock up on alcohol.

Further, the weak krona has led to an increase in private imports from Sweden to Finland, Denmark and Norway, Systembolaget said.

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Spain has second highest rate of daily alcohol drinkers in EU

Photo: Cristina Quicler/AFP

Thirteen percent of people in Spain drink alcohol every day, a similar rate to Italy, where 12 percent enjoy a tipple on a daily basis, and only behind Portugal, where 20 percent of people have an alcoholic drink seven days a week.

That puts Spaniards above the EU average of 8.4 percent daily drinkers, data published by Eurostat in July 2021 reveals.

This consistent alcoholic intake among Spaniards is far higher than in countries such as Sweden (1.8 percent daily drinkers), Poland (1.6 percent), Norway (1.4 percent), Estonia (1.3 percent) and Latvia (1.2 percent).

However, the survey that looked at the frequency of alcohol consumption in people aged 15 and over shows that weekly and monthly drinking habits among Spaniards are more in line with European averages.

A total of 22.9 percent of respondents from Spain said they drunk booze on a weekly basis, 18.3 percent every month, 12.5 percent less than once a month, and 33 percent haven’t had a drink ever or in the last year.

Furthermore, another part of the study which looked at heavy episodic drinking found that Spaniards are the third least likely to get blind drunk, after Cypriots and Italians.

The Europeans who ingested more than 60 grammes of pure ethanol on a single occasion at least once a month in 2019 were Danes (37.8 percent), Romanians (35 percent), Luxembourgers (34.3 percent) and Germans (30.4 percent).

The UK did not form part of the study but Ireland is included.

Overall, Eurostat’s findings reflect how the Spanish habit of enjoying a glass of wine with a meal or a small beer (caña) outdoors with friends continues to be common daily practice, even though 13 percent does not make it prevalent.

Spaniards’ tendency to drink in moderation also continues to prevail, even though a 2016 study by Danish pharmaceuticals company Lundbeck found that one in six people in the country still drinks too much.

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