Wine and spirits sales down, reveals WSTA
Wine and spirit sales continue to fall as consumers battle with year-on-year duty rises, according to the Wine & Spirit Trade Association's latest market report.
Wine and spirit sales continue to fall as consumers battle with year-on-year duty rises, according to the Wine & Spirit Trade Association's latest market report.
A drop of 4% in volume sales in the on-trade and 3% in the off-trade in the past year indicates consumers are tightening their purse strings after five consecutive years of above-inflation duty rises, said the report.
Despite this, tax increases in 2012 helped push up prices by 2% in the off-trade and 3% in the on-trade.
The report calls on Chancellor George Osborne to scrap the duty escalator in this week's Budget, after an automatic 2% alcohol duty increase above inflation has been in place since 2008. If the alcohol duty escalator is kept in place until 2015, the report adds, duty on wine will have increased by 50% and spirits by 44% since 2008.
Despite Christmas sales being the trade's usual safe bet, in the last 12 weeks of 2012 alcohol sales fell by 4% compared with the same period the previous year.
The WSTA Market Report uses data and analysis from Nielsen, CGA Strategy and the Wilson Drinks Report.
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