|
Related Topics |
|
In today's 2nd blog post we take a look at the average price paid per 330ml beer per province of South Africa, as measured by Statistics South Africa (Stats SA). Note the average prices are provided for illustrative purposes only and is not an official statistic published by the Stats agency.
|
|
Beer is expensive where it is brewed?
The line graph below shows the average price paid per 330ml beer per province per month from January 2017. A few observations we want to get out of the way is the fact that according to Stats SA numbers, no prices were collected for 330ml beers in the Northern Cape from January 2017. And in the Free State, there were no longer prices available for 330ml beers from September 2017. It does strike us as odd that prices are not available for such an extent of time? Perhaps the stats agency only supply average prices if averages are made up by say more than 5 prices? We do not know. We will inquire. But lets get back to the numbers that are available. See line graph below.
What is surprising to us is the fact that the Western Cape has the highest average price per 330ml beer over the entire time span considered in this graphic. Cape Town has a massive brewery and it is curious that the cost of beer be so much more expensive in the Western Cape when there is a large brewery located close buy, this less shipping and transportation and storage costs involved to get the beer to the consumers in the Western Cape.
One would have expected provinces in the interior such as Gauteng (where most of South Africa's economic activity takes place) have higher beer prices as it takes a lot more shipping and transportation to either get imported beer to the province, or local manufactured beer from the Western Cape to Gauteng for example.
As with our white bread price analysis, we do find the pricing behaviour of retailers extremely interesting, all be it sometimes extremely strange too. Below a summary of the average price paid per 330ml beer (from retail or liquor stores) in March 2018:
One would have expected provinces in the interior such as Gauteng (where most of South Africa's economic activity takes place) have higher beer prices as it takes a lot more shipping and transportation to either get imported beer to the province, or local manufactured beer from the Western Cape to Gauteng for example.
As with our white bread price analysis, we do find the pricing behaviour of retailers extremely interesting, all be it sometimes extremely strange too. Below a summary of the average price paid per 330ml beer (from retail or liquor stores) in March 2018:
- Western Cape: R14.27
- Eastern Cape: R11.97
- Northern Cape: no 330ml beer prices
- Free State: no 330ml beer prices
- KwaZulu-Natal: R12.76
- North West: R11.8
- Gauteng: R13.83
- Mpumalanga: R12.51
- Limpopo: R11.79