Trouble is brewing according to news from Spiegel Online. We may soon notice a lack of beer mats:

…the economic crisis is threatening the beer mat — and unnerving its fans. The world’s biggest beer mat company, Katz Group, has declared itself bankrupt. Tucked away in Weisenbach in the south-west of Germany, Katz Group, which was founded as a sawmill in 1716, had been in the beer mat business since 1903. Katz International Coasters controlled around two-thirds of the European market and 97 percent of the US market.

It seems they were a form of advertising that started in 1880. The decline after a hundred strong years is not exactly a bad run, and seems to coincide with the decline in other print advertising. Interesting that there was no competition in America.