Looking at the weather over here, I don't necessarily the season was that good (especially the start of the summer was extremely wet, something hops absolutely hates - but considering the hop price due to the bad harvest, I can imagine the producers invested in output. It was the same with coffee and cocoa in the past couple of years. They just put down more acres, so have more production.
And yes, I'm afraid you guys are in a bad spot due to the brexit currency drop. The pound went from 1.50 USD in June to about 1.23 USD now. So that's about a 20% increase in cost right there (the EUR stays pretty stable, although it looks quite jumpy). Postage isn't that much though, it might be an idea to grow some of your own hops from rhizomes. They should be pretty affordable if bought as a group. If they have a lot of plants, rhizomes theoretically should also drop a bit in price.
