Current and future trends in the consumption, sale and purchasing of alcohol-free and low-alcohol products in Great Britain, 2014 to 2023.

Abstract

Background and aims: The UK Government has committed to reducing alcohol consumption by 2025 through increasing the availability of alcohol-free and low-alcohol (no/lo) drinks. This study estimated current and future trends in key indicators of the availability, sale, purchasing and consumption of no/lo products in Great Britain.

Design: Seasonal autoregressive integrated moving average models of market research data and repeat-cross-sectional survey data on alcohol consumption.

Setting: Great Britain (England, Scotland and Wales), January 2014-December 2025.

Participants/measurements: The study used population-level data on no/lo product availability and sales in the on-trade (e.g. bars, pubs, clubs, restaurants), as well as the off-trade (e.g. supermarkets and convenience stores) (2014-2023), continuous household panel data on purchasing (n ≈ 30 000; 2018-2023) and repeat-cross-sectional survey data on consumption (n ≈ 80 000, 2020-2024) to construct monthly time series for seven indicators. It described current trends and forecast them to December 2025.

Findings: All indicators showed increasing trends to 2025. The forecast level of each indicator in December 2025 was: Indicators 1 and 2: Percentage of alcoholic drinks sales volume that is no/lo products: 2.3% (50% Prediction Interval 2.1%-2.9%, off-trade) and 1.0% (50% Prediction Interval 0.8%-1.1%, on-trade); Indicator 3: Percentage of pubs selling draught no/lo products: 6.8% (50% Prediction Interval 6.1%-7.5%); Indicator 4: Percentage of households purchasing off-trade no/lo products but not alcoholic products: 12.3% (50% Prediction Interval 10.9%-13.6%); Indicator 5: Percentage of higher alcohol purchasing households that are increasing off-trade purchasing of no/lo products: 24.3% (50% Prediction Interval 21.3%-30.6%); Indicator 6: Percentage of households increasing off-trade purchasing of no/lo products and decreasing purchasing of alcoholic products: 1.8% (50% Prediction Interval 0.8%-2.8%); Indicator 7: Percentage of risky drinkers using no/lo products in most recent cut-down attempt: 42.4% (50% Prediction Interval 37.2%-53.3%).

Conclusions: Consumption of alcohol-free and low-alcohol drinks is increasing in Great Britain but predicted to remain low in 2025 (estimated at 1.0% of on-trade and 2.3% of off-trade alcohol sales volume in servings by the end of 2025). There is some evidence that people are using no/lo drinks in attempts to reduce their alcohol consumption.