Fears Australia wouldn’t embrace hard seltzer have been well and truly laid to rest by the latest data from IRI, which shows the category has grown a whopping 282% over the last year.

The US phenomenon has become a $210million category in Australia, taking a 16% of the share of the long-established light RTD category.

IRI is bullish about the future prospects for seltzer – it predicts sales in Australia will hit $300 million by 2025.

White Claw continues to be the No.1 brand, both in Australia and globally. One in three seltzers sold over the Aussie summer had the White Claw logo on them and the brand has sold more than 16 million cans since launching Down Under in October 2020.

“Australian consumers have cottoned on via social…that this was something they wanted to be part of,” Anubha Sahasrabuddhe, consumer and brand director at Lion, which distributes White Claw in Australia, told Business Insider.

Lance Friedman, RTD category manager at Endeavour Group said White Claw was the retailer’s most anticipated drinks launch of 2020.

“It was so in demand we made White Claw pre-orders available for customers two weeks before they landed in stores,” Friedman said, the first time Dan Murphy’s had set up a pre-order campaign for a premix drink.

One of the keys to the brand’s success has been its strong presence on social media, with 45 million social impressions in Australia alone.

Australians have also embraced the US’s number one White Claw variant, the Variety Pack, which features 10 White Claw in and four different flavours. It’s gone on to become the best-selling product in the White Claw Aussie range, with 28% of total
cases sold over summer being the Variety Pack.

It’s followed closely by Mango at 25% and Watermelon, which only launched in September 2021 but already makes up 20% of total sales.