WHITE SPIRITS: INTRODUCTION Gin trumps vodka while tequila recovers strongly
While gin has continued to dominate the headlines in both domestic and travel retail markets this year, vodka – the frontrunner in white spirits – loses market share and some of its retail footprint, as Charlotte Turner reports.
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any vodka suppliers would admit that the last few years have been
challenging in the DF&TR market as the popularity of gin continues unabated. Whether its small batch, flavoured or premium brands, the gin category has certainly been enjoying a fruitful couple of years. As Luke Barras-Hill reports on
p47, the demand for premium and super-premium gins in particular has really opened up the market for new brands and innovations that might not previously have made any commercial sense. As International Wine and Spirits
Research (IWSR) confirmed to TRBusiness, gin was one of the fastest- growing spirits categories in travel retail last year. In contrast, vodka sales
(volume) grew marginally by 1.8% in 2017. While this might seem underwhelming, it still ensured that the sub-category comfortably outpaced the domestic market, where sales of vodka dropped -6.1%. As explored on p43, the share of
mid-market vodka brands climbed from 83.3% in 2016 to 83.6% in 2017, while flavoured vodkas were flat. While the giants of the white spirits
category jostled for dominance, interestingly tequila actually saw sales grow +5.5% in 2017; a very positive result which followed a less than favourable 2016. “Following two years of declining
sales in travel retail the tequila category grew by nearly double digits in 2017,” insists Eric Helms, Marketing Director for Brown- Forman Global Travel Retail. “A further positive sign for tequilas is that one-half of that growth was in the vital markets of the Americas.” Fellow white spirit, Sambuca
couldn’t match tequila’s growth last year, but sales were still in positive territory (+2.3%). Moving on to popular Asian spirits,
Baijiu and Soju, the former suffered a -16.3% decline in duty free while the latter reported flat sales growth of -0.4%.
Category shopper profile To order to better understand the performance of the white spirits category as a whole, TRBusiness approached consumer insight specialists at m1nd-set to obtain a clearer picture of who the white spirits shopper is; at least in duty free & travel retail.
Category Baijiu
TOP WHITE SPIRITS BRANDS IN DUTY FREE BY CATEGORY Brand
Volume 2017*
Vodka Vodka Vodka
Tequila Tequila Tequila
Gin Gin Gin
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Shui Jing Fang Baijiu
Absolut Vodka Smirnoff Vodka
Grey Goose Vodka Cuervo Tequila 0.0
0.7 0.5 0.3
Sauza Tequila
www.trbusiness.com/subscriptions0.6% Sierra Tequila
0.1 0.0 0.0
Bombay Gin Gordon’s Gin Tanqueray Gin
* Millions of nine-litre cases. SEPTEMBER 2018
N/A N/A N/A
-15.6% 0.0%
1.1% 1.2%
18.8% 5.3%
-4.7% 1.1%
26.6% Source: The IWSR 2018 -10.2%
-6.2% -2.3% 4.5%
1.9% -28.4%
-4.9% -6.0% -6.2%
3.0%
shoppers tend to be relatively high spenders, with $105 being the average spend in the category. Overwhelmingly, shoppers for white spirits do so for self-consumption whilst 34% of shoppers buy in this category to gift. Whilst the duty free and travel
retail industry is often criticised for no longer offering competitive prices – especially since duty free was abolished in Europe – it is clear that white spirits buyers are strongly motivated by the fact that they are getting a ‘good deal’. Forty-two percent of those
TRBUSINESS 39
CAGR Volume 2012 - 2017
Gin takes centre-stage in DF&TR.
Vodka sales (volume) grew marginally by 1.8% in 2017, which while underwhelming still comfortably outpaced the domestic market where sales dropped -6.1%.
TRBusiness/ IWSR
According to m1nd-set, 65% of white spirits shoppers are male (35% female) with an average age – for both genders – of 43 years-old. Fifty-six percent of these shoppers
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Chg Volumes 2016 - 2017
are economy travellers and the same percentage of these shoppers are travelling for leisure, whilst 26% are travelling for business. Perhaps surprisingly, white spirits
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