Santo Domingo, Dec 20 (EFE) .- Dominicans may have difficulty buying beer this Christmas due to the shortage of glass bottles caused by the global supply crisis, the country’s main brewery warned on Monday.

The Dominican National Brewery, which manufactures Presidente beer, the emblem of the Caribbean country, warned in a statement that it has only received 57% of the bottles it has ordered abroad in 2021, a situation derived from the global logistics crisis, which affects the market of glass bottles for months.

This situation, as pointed out in a note by the vice president of Marketing and Strategy of the brewery, Cándida Hernández, “still prevents meeting the current demand and the one expected for the end of the year holidays”, which is precisely the time of greatest consumption of alcohol in the country.

For months, glass bottles of nationally produced beers have been in short supply in stores and supermarkets, so Dominicans have had to choose either to drink from a can or to consume imported beers.

To address the lack of glass bottles, the brewery reiterated on Monday its invitation to consumers to return the bottles to stores to reuse them and, thus, “make up for the lack of these containers.”

The Dominican National Brewery is also promoting the opening of a glass bottle factory in the Dominican Republic, in collaboration with the Caribbean Glass Industry company.

The factory, which opened this year, has just produced the first sample bottles, which is “good news as a result of months of constant work between the two companies,” the statement said.

“The reactivation of the local glass industry is close to becoming a reality,” stressed the Brewery.

However, “we still have challenging weeks ahead. Our consumer could experience unavailability situations due to the lack of packaging on the December holiday,” said the company, which is a subsidiary of Belgian-Brazilian giant InBev.