As Germans slowly fall out of love with their lager, brewers have felt the pinch. Now the Federal Cartel Office has caught them fixing prices with supermarkets and has thrown the book at them.
German beer sales have sunk to their lowest level since reunification almost 25 years ago, as drinkers increasingly turn to mixed drinks and non-alcoholic beers.
UPDATE: Germany fined some of its biggest breweries €106.5 million on Monday for price fixing - after Becks brewer Anheuser-Busch struck a deal to get off in return for information on its competitors.
Germany's breweries have allegedly been conspiring to fix beer prices for the past 20 years in a scandal more widespread than initially thought, a report has revealed. They could now face hundreds of millions of euros in fines.
Several potato processing plants in Germany are being investigated on the suspicion of illegally fixing prices for more than a decade, costing consumers and farmers more than €100 million.
Competition regulators are investigating more than a dozen large German breweries suspected of illegally fixing prices on popular beers such as Jever, Becks, Warsteiner and Erdinger, it emerged over the weekend.
Coffee lovers have been overpaying in Germany, the competition watchdog announced this week as it slapped fines totalling €159.5 million on three of the country’s biggest coffee makers, Tchibo, Melitta and Dallmayr.
