India has become the world’s largest Scotch Whisky buyer by volume
Key takeaways:
- India outdrinks France as the leading buyer of Scotch whisky by volume.
The latest figures reveal that India has replaced France as the world’s largest buyer of Scotch whisky by volume.
India ousts France as the biggest Scotch whisky buyer:
Whisky makers shipped 219 million bottles to India, up 60% in 2021, the Scotch Whisky Association (SWA) told.
The US is still the biggest consumer by value – it imported Scotch whisky worth £1.05bn ($1.27bn) in 2022. India sits fifth on the list.
Scotch has long been a class symbol in India but still has just a 2% share in the planet’s biggest whisky market.
Blended whisky is more affordable and has long been the best choice for millions of Indian buyers. But the need for more costly single malts has been rising too, forced by cultural changes and a peak in Indians’ spending power.
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While India’s contribution to international Scotch sales has surged – export volumes to the nation rose nearly 200% over the last decade – exporters see a lot of space to grow.
India levies a 150% import tax on each bottle of Scotch – primarily due to lobbying by domestic distillers – pushing up prices and shrinking profit margins for producers.
The SWA expects that a long-awaited business deal between India and the UK could help facilitate this – the two nations missed a deadline last October to settle but have conducted some talks so far.
Scotch is one of the goods whose sales could rise if the deal goes through and taxes are reduced – the SWA said in a report that, according to in-house research, this could lead to “an extra £1bn of growth over the following five years”.
France was second on the SWA’s list regarding value and volume.
Besides India, Scotch makers saw a double-digit increase in Taiwan, Singapore and China “as the post-Covid recovery continued”, the association stated.
