How Guinness is succeeding in a nation with decreasing beer consumption rates

Beer volumes are decreasing in New Zealand, but Guinness sales have boomed in the nation of moderation.

A 2025 Statistics New Zealand report on the alcohol available for consumption in New Zealand  showed a 10 per cent drop that year to 265 million litres of beer volumes.

This follows a rise of 5.4 per cent in 2024, and a fall of 4.4 per cent in 2023.

The report further showed a 27 per cent drop in higher-strength brews above five percent ABV (alcohol by volume), clearly showing national moderation trends.

Overall, alcohol available for consumption also dropped 8.3 per cent to a record low of 442 million litres.

Guinness has been distributed for more than 170 years in New Zealand, but the last couple of years have seen an unusual spike of sales. In 2024. sales of the Irish stout saw a rise of 21 per cent.

The Fiddler duty manager Hiri Bradley says recent social media campaigns such as “splitting the G” , have made the drink popular among younger drinkers.

“We've had young ones come in and they’ll order a Guinness just to split the G,” he says. The online challenge sees Guinness drinkers try to gulp their Guinness until the level of beer in the glass aligns with the Guinness logo on the glass,

Bradley says Guinness makes up around 40 to 50 per cent of total beer sales at the Auckland CBD’s iconic Irish pub.

“I've worked [here] for the last 10 years . . . after Covid came, I've never seen that much Guinness sales in all my life.”

The Fiddler struggles to keep up with recent high demand for Guinness.

“We run out of Guinness all the time. We've got to borrow it off other pubs,” he says.

Lion NZ is the official brewing and distribution partner for Guinness in New Zealand.

Beer director at Lion NZ Todd Gordon says the drink is “obviously having a real moment in culture".

“The whole thing with Guinness is about the two-step pour and about it being worth the wait. They've got a massive international focus on quality.”

He says New Zealand has exceptionally good Guinness, getting second in the world for its quality right behind Ireland.

Every batch of Guinness brewed goes through 284 quality checks. A keg of each batch brewed in New Zealand is sent back to Ireland for analysis.

New Zealand has found it hard to get enough supply of the non-alcoholic Guinness following moderation trends, with Diageo struggling to keep up with its global demand for Guinness 0.0.

“People have just been more mindful of what they drink and how they drink.

“We don't see [Guinness 0.0] is getting new people into beer, but people that may have had a beer at the end of the day now have zero at the end of the day,” Gordon says.

Guinness 0.0 is only brewed in Dublin with a strict quality regime and has become more widely available in cans late last year to New Zealand.

Gordon says that the zero market in New Zealand is quite small, taking up around three to four per cent of total beer, but growing rapidly.

The future of Guinness popularity in New Zealand is unknown, but its adaption to the country’s moderation trends could see it sticking around for a while.

“It's growing a lot and it'll continue to do that, but at some point, inevitably it will flatten off,” Gordon says.

“If it does die out it won't be anytime soon, because a lot of people are actually hooked on it,” Bradley says.

More kiwi pubs are pouring Guinness, and its non-alcoholic version could potentially see a spike if New Zealand’s drinking habits stay in moderation.

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AI was not used in the creation of this story.