The Swedish alcohol monopoly has today released its figures for 2011 which show a slight rise in overall volumes. However the big news is that Systembolaget customers have never been so satisfied with the monopoly as they are today.

Total sales in the Systembolaget last year were fairly flat compared to 2010.

According to the Systembolaget’s ‘customer satisfaction index’ (nöjd-kund-index) 79 out of 100 customers were happy with the monopoly’s service in 2011 – the highest score ever recorded. The figures also reveal that 68% of customers want the monopoly to remain right where it is.*

“It is encouraging that the Swedish people appreciate the Systembolaget”, says the monopoly’s Managing Director Magdalena Gerger. “It demonstrates that the Systembolaget’s role of selling alcohol responsibly is important as well as that our service and product range is appreciated”.

Despite a tiny hike in total sales of alcohol at the monopoly in 2011 (0.3% on 2010 measured in terms of pure alcohol) it was the brands with little or no alcohol in them that fared best in 2011, with sales of alcohol-free products rocketing by 26% on the previous year.

Another big mover was the ecological segment with demand for eco-friendly products rising by 23% compared to 2010, prompting the monopoly to increase its green range to around 150 items by the end of the year.

Sales of beer were pretty static at 0.6% (although this doesn’t tell us much about, for instance, how the craft beer segment performed) while total wine sales rose slightly by 1.7%.

In addition the number of customer visits to the monopoly rose in 2011 by 1.4% to circa 117 million (of which a vast majority of these visits were from the BeerSweden community – allegedly**)

*Source –  TNS Sifo:s mätningar

**Source – my overactive imagination

Rosé wine and alcohol-free drinks were (as predicted) the summer sales hits in the Systembolaget according to a report just released by the monopoly.

Sales of alcohol-free drinks rocketed by 42% between June and August compared to the same period last year, while rosé wine for under 70 SEK a bottle recorded growth of just over 41% to 5.9 million litres.

Sales of other types of alcohol were fairly flat with total beer sales up just 0.8% (although this figure is top line doesn’t show us the performance of the Swedish craft brewers who I am confident out-performed the category). Spirits were the only type of alcohol to show a drop in sales, down 2.3% on last year.

The report also reveals that we paid 31.6 million visits to the Systembolaget during the summer months. I was personally responsible for several of them.

The Systembolaget’s Press Officer Lennart Agén said it was “extremely pleasing” that more and more people are discovering alcohol-free products.

“In order to meet this growing demand we will continue to increase our alcohol-free range”, he said.

It may not quite be alcohol-free (although it almost is) but I feel compelled to finish this post with two words. Nanny State.

Alcohol-free brands have become more popular while sales of beer and wine took a dip in the second quarter of 2010 according to figures released by the Systembolaget this week.

Sales of beer in particular started out flat against 2009 with a drop of 0.4% for the first three months. The trend worsened slightly in the second quarter as total beer sales fell by 6.2% over the same period in 2009.

These figures are posted against a backdrop of a small rise of 2.2% in total sales of alcohol in the monopoly for the first half of 2010 and an increase of 2.5% in the total number of customers compared to 2009.

The biggest winner in a quiet 6 months sales period are alcohol-free brands – which includes beer brands such as Estrella Damm Non-Alcoholic and Weihenstephaner Hefeweissbier Alkoholfrei– with sales jumping over 27% on last year for the first six months of the year to 545,000 litres.

Relatively small in the bigger picture perhaps but a significant trend that the Systembolaget’s Press Officer Lennart Agén is happy to note.

He says: “It is naturally pleasing that demand for our alcohol-free products is so large. It demonstrates that many customers are interested in their health (Ed note: this rather suggests that drinks with alcohol in them are not good for us Lennart, which is not necessarily the case) and that more people would like to eat and drink well without alcohol being involved”.

Of the 107,991,000 litres of beer sold so far in 2010 it’s not possible to see what percentage of this is craft beer. My gut feel from talking to several of the Swedish microbreweries is that this is a great year for sales with more and more beer drinkers breaking out of the ‘stor stark syndrome’ and trying quality brews. If you’re a craft brewer reading this then let us know whether your beers really are bucking the trend here in Sweden!

Other than the usual figures released by the Systembolaget that prove we’re still happy with it (I always feel a mild sense of desperation when I read these stats, as though the monopoly is like one of those ‘career kids’ at school that desperately wants everyone to like them) the most interesting fact I could find involves midsummer.

Apparently a jaw-dropping 2.5 million of us paid a visit to the monopoly during the annual midsummer celebrations week in June, with 1.1 million people stocking up the day before midsommarafton alone – the most visits to the monopoly in a single day ever!

In a country with a population of just over 9 million that’s a pretty impressive figure don’t you think? It also sheds some light on the nation’s current relationship to alcohol, with the country’s unofficial national day one of its booziest too.

I’m sure Mr Bellman is looking down on us all right now with a big grin on his face. And a large glass of something extremely not non-alcoholic of course.