NDARC developed a tool to collect the price of alcoholic beverages across three NSW locations.

A total of 82,452 listings of alcohol products were collected in July, August and September 2023. Products included beer and cider (categorised by low, mid, full and high strength), wine (categorised by size of vessel), spirits, and premixes.

Key findings

• City locations had at least two times as many available product listings compared with the non-city location.
• Most product listings were wine across all locations (56.3% to 59.2%), followed by spirits (16.1% to 22.2%), beer and cider (12.5% to 15.4%) and premix (7.7% to 10.7%).
• Alcohol was generally cheaper in non-city areas (21.0% of products were under $1.80 in remote areas compared to 18.0% in the capital city).
• 1 in 4 of all beer, cider and wine listings were under $1.80 per standard drink.
• Wine products showed the greatest fluctuation in price over time.
• Wine had the greatest range in price, and the most listings under $0.80, $1.00, $1.30 and $1.50 (per standard drink) compared with other beverage types across all locations.
• Over 1 in 10 wine products ≥1 L in vessel size were priced at under 40c per standard drink. Wine products ≥2 L in vessel size (generally cask wines) were the cheapest of all identified products.
• The cheapest alcohol was a cask wine product at <30c per standard drink. This product was a 4 L cask at $13.

Summary

• The findings support an ongoing data collection system to inform and monitor impacts of interventions aimed at reducing alcohol use and harms.
• A future model could consider additional aspects, including increased frequency of data collection on a subset of popular or core products, additional locations, triangulation with health or socio-economic data, exploration of volume purchase discounts, broader marketing and sales practices and evaluation of impacts for policy.

Recommended citation

Man, N., Linghu, Q., Sadaphale, V., Yang, Y., Yuen, W., Miller, M., Craig, M., Buckfield, L., Livingston, M., Callinan, S., Henderson, A., Britton, I. & Peacock, A. Establishing a monitoring system for off-premise alcohol retailer beverage pricing in New South Wales: A pilot study. Sydney: National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre, UNSW Sydney; 2024. Available from: doi.org/10.26190/unsworks/30223

Funding

This project was supported by the New South Wales Ministry of Health funding. The National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre is supported by funding from the Australian Government Department of Health and Aged Care. Amy Peacock is supported by a National Health and Medical Research Council Investigator Fellowship.

Disclosures of interest

All authors declare no competing interests.

Acknowledgements

We acknowledge the traditional custodians of the lands on which the work for this report was undertaken. We pay our respects to Elders past, present, and emerging.