by Casey Hall and Emma Rumney
SHANGHAI (Reuters) – Pernod Ricard launched its The Chuan first malt whiskey in China on Tuesday, the first product from its local distillery located in the Sichuan province, in the southwest of the country.
Pernod Ricard’s whiskey will be distributed nationwide from Wednesday, priced at 888 yuan per bottle (114.93 euros).
According to Alexandre Ricard, CEO of the French spirits group, the Chinese market is currently “slowing down, from a contextual point of view”, but it remains promising despite the current economic slowdown thanks to the development of its middle class and profit margins. important development for international liquors.
“Chinese consumers are developing a taste for diverse spirit profiles, particularly whiskeys,” the CEO said. “We think the potential is very significant for the next ten years.”
The group “thus responds to the growing enthusiasm of Chinese consumers and their increasingly diverse tastes”, declares Jérôme Cottin-Bizonne, general manager of Pernod Ricard China, in a press release.
Pernod is not the only global player in the spirits sector to increase its whiskey production in China. Diageo, its main rival, will also open a $75 million single malt distillery this month, under construction since 2021.
There are 30 to 50 whiskey distilleries in China, explained Alexandre Ricard, most of them still under construction.
Pernod is on a mission to dethrone Diageo and become the world’s leading spirits manufacturer and conquering emerging markets is essential to this strategy. China is the world’s largest spirits market but is currently almost entirely dominated by the local spirit, baijiu.
International spirits represent 3% of the total alcoholic beverage market in China, which is three and a half times the size of the United States, Diageo executives told an investors conference.
“It’s a huge market… and we haven’t even started to get into it,” John O’Keeffe, head of Asia-Pacific at Diageo, told investors.
Whiskey is a rapidly growing category, with China’s whiskey market reaching $2.3 billion in 2022, according to Euromonitor International, which estimates it will reach $6.7 billion by 2027, an annual growth by more than 20%, compared to 4% globally.
According to Allison Malmsten, director of research at Daxue Consulting, China’s baijiu consumers are aging and production is declining, making way for other spirits.
“About half of Chinese whiskey drinkers are Generation Z, almost 90% are men, they are generally educated and upper class,” detailed Allison Malmsten, adding that whiskey bars popping up in Chinese cities are “crowded with young people”.
(Casey Hall report, French version Corentin Chappron)
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