36th Qingdao Beer Festival Opens, Tsingtao Launches Craft Beers, Industry Sales Hit RMB 180B in 2025

In July, the beer industry entered its peak consumption season as the 36th Qingdao International Beer Festival opened, running for 30 days.

Data from the China Alcoholic Drinks Association showed that the industry's sales revenue in 2025 reached approximately RMB 180 billion, up about 4% year-on-year, with profit of about RMB 30.5 billion, up about 18%.

At this year's beer festival, Tsingtao displayed its full range of products including Classic, Pure Draft, White Beer, and Original Mash, as well as craft beers such as hazy IPA, Belgian Dubbel, and Wheat Bock. The Whole Wheat 1903 was upgraded, and new health-oriented products like Light Dry and Non-Alcohol also debuted. For the festival, Tsingtao launched two limited-edition products: Lemon-Flavored Fruit Beer and Mixed Berry Fruit and Vegetable Juice Beer.

Tsingtao set up three themed venues in the West Coast New Area, Laoshan, and the historic city center, linking the Tsingtao Beer Museum, trendy bars, craft beer gardens, and distinctive streets to create an integrated consumption landscape. By incorporating immersive experiences such as beer cultural creative products, smart retail, and entertainment interactions, it built a new consumption ecosystem that resonates with flavor, scene, culture, and emotion.

In 2025, Tsingtao's sales growth for mid-to-high-end and above products significantly outpaced overall sales growth, with record highs for the Classic series, White Beer, and ultra-premium series. The company's beer business gross margin was 41.72%, up 1.61 percentage points year-on-year, and its weighted average return on equity reached 15.5%.

Leveraging national-level innovation platforms, Tsingtao has built a technology cluster comprising six core technologies and over 100 peripheral technologies, and has won the National Science and Technology Progress Award four times. Its self-developed flavor profiling technology can convert consumer preferences into production parameters, enabling alignment between consumer demand and precise corporate R&D.

Tsingtao was the first in the industry to deploy instant retail, with its 'Fresh Direct Delivery' model covering more than 40 cities and over 1,000 stores. Its online sales channel has achieved 13 consecutive years of growth.

Tsingtao has built a multi-field ecosystem encompassing beer brewing, trendy cultural tourism, and biotechnology, shifting from brewing 'a bottle of beer' to building 'an industry ecosystem', transforming its single manufacturing capability into a platform-based ecological capability.