The Confederation of Indian Alcoholic Beverage Companies (CIABC) says, popular imported wine brands have been missing from the shelves this festive season due to labelling guidelines. The lack in the supplies of imported wines has spelled good news for Indian wine producers as it has given them a chance to make huge inroads into the wine market.
Ever since the FSSAI made it compulsory to list ingredients in English or Devanagari on the labels of imported wines it has become difficult to procure imported wines. Since the Indian market is small, foreign wine producers feel it is not feasible to adhere to such stringent compliance requirements on labels.
This festival season has seen an increase of 20% in the sale of Indian wines. Indian brands like Renaissance Wines have got an order of 10,000 cases whereas in the normal run of business they get orders for between 2000 to 3000 cases. In fact suppliers, who provided hotel chains and other customers with imported wines, tried to get Indian wines to fill the gap as they did not want to lose business. Indian wine manufacturers already have their own regular distributors so wine importers found it difficult to procure even the Indian wines. Wine manufacturers naturally did not give them the same attention as they first want to serve their own regular distributors.
Presently wines in the lower segment that cost around Rs.250 are more popular and they dominated sales by more than 60%. However, the Indian wine industry has much to cheer for as around 15 million tonnes of wine is expected to be produced this season and there are likely to be no spillovers of stock. Foreign wine in five star hotels is sold through a quota system but Indian wine producers are hopeful of seeing a rise in sales in this premium segment too.
The wine and spirit industry pays almost 76, 000 crores in taxes but the figure may see a reduction this year, as imports of wine have reduced drastically in India. However, American brands like, Signature Selections is looking to actively expand in India especially as the sales in the American market are down. Also with the slowdown in China and embargo in Russia, they are looking towards the other two BRIC countries that is India and Brazil to give a boost to sales. The market review says that once Indian consumers learn all about drinking wine then the market will be ripe for expansion and this is when foreign wine companies are likely to make a plunge again.
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