Qingdao's Sales Plummet Due to 'Urination Controversy'... Japanese and American Beers Take Over

Sales of Qingdao Plummet Domestically Amid Controversy
Asahi, Budweiser, Heineken Enjoy Spillover Benefits

The backlash over the ‘urination video’ at the Qingdao Beer production plant, considered one of China’s four major beers, is intensifying. In South Korea, sales of Qingdao Beer have sharply declined, while imported beers from countries like Japan and the United States are enjoying a windfall.

Recently, a video was posted on Weibo showing a man entering the malt storage area, a raw material for beer, at Qingdao’s 3rd factory in Pingdu City, Shandong Province, and urinating there.

In the video, presumed to have been filmed inside the factory, the man wearing a helmet and work clothes climbs over a shoulder-high wall exposed on all sides, enters the area where the raw materials are piled up, looks around, and urinates.

The video quickly rose to the top of Weibo’s real-time search rankings, sparking a huge controversy as consumers demanded an immediate investigation into the matter.

Subsequently, the Qingdao Beer importer in South Korea explained, “Products produced at the factory involved in the controversy are for domestic consumption in China and are not sold in Korea.”

However, following the spread of the controversy, sales of Qingdao Beer at convenience stores have plummeted by 20 to 40%. From the 21st to the 26th, sales of Qingdao Beer at convenience stores A and B decreased by 41.3% and 30.6%, respectively, compared to the previous week.

Tsingtao beer displayed at a supermarket in downtown Seoul. [Image source=Yonhap News]

From the beginning of this year until September, Chinese beers including Qingdao were imported into South Korea worth 27 million USD, ranking third after Japan and the Netherlands, and consistently held sales rankings between 3rd and 5th among canned beers at convenience stores. However, after the urination video incident, it sharply fell out of the top 5.

Instead, Japanese Asahi, American Budweiser, and Dutch Heineken have taken those spots. At convenience store A, Budweiser and Heineken pushed Qingdao out and took the 3rd place in sales, while sales of Japanese Asahi, ranked 2nd, also increased. At convenience store B, sales of Budweiser and Belgian Stella also rose.

Considering the boycott of Japanese beer that lasted more than two years during the past ‘No Japan’ movement, the industry expects the trend of avoiding Qingdao Beer to continue for the time being.

Qingdao Beer, along with Xuehua, Yanjing, and Harbin beers, is considered one of China’s four major beers. It was established in 1903 in Qingdao, then a German concession, by Germans and British.

The Qingdao Beer 3rd factory in Pingdu, Qingdao City, has increased its annual beer production from 750,000 kiloliters in 2018 to a global scale of 1.2 million kiloliters last year through continuous expansion. However, due to this incident, doubts about lax product management have grown, putting the brand at risk of significant damage to its image and a decline in sales.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.