Has the UK drinker fallen out of love with Scotch Whisky?
Commercial Spirits Intelligence No.55
As people who have worked in and around the spirits industry for many years, we found that there was a lack of good, public, research on the trends in the spirits industry. Whether it’s trends in wood, or distillery capacity, or M&A activity - many of the existing research providers speak to a specific niche when we wanted a whole-market analysis. In this newsletter we leverage our experience, contacts and market intel to provide meaningful analysis that speaks to relevant issues for you. This newsletter is a collaboration between Duncan McFadzean of Noble & Co, and Martin Purvis. If you find this newsletter valuable, please consider a paid subscription.
Has the UK fallen out of love with Scotch Whisky?
Executive Summary
In this article, we take a longer-term view of the history of Scotch whisky export data for the last 20 years and also dig into the performance of the domestic market which is usually absent from the mainstream press coverage. Export volume has increased but at low single-digit rates since the turn of the millennium. 2022 is now clearly viewed as a post-COVID outlier and further decline in 2024 would see export volumes return to the average for the last 20 years. Value has increased more rapidly over the same period but we believe this only really reflects normal UK inflation. In comparison, the UK market has seen a significant volume decline for all domestic whisky produced within the UK (Including English Whisky, Welsh Whisky, and Irish Whiskey from Northern Ireland, as well as Scotch whisky). Figures obtained from HMRC show a 26% decline in volumes since 2002 and we believe this is due to falling sales of blended Scotch whisky. We believe that single malt has increased its share over the period and this would be expected in a mature marketplace. It will be interesting to see if 2024 shows a continuation of the same patterns. We watch and wait to see how it unfolds.