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

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.