I was interviewed by John Beattie who, in addition to his role as a presenter on BBC Radio Scotland, has started a whisky podcast called “Cask to Glass”.
John asked me about the state of the global market for Scotch whisky and the dangers of another “whisky loch”…
“I think the industry is in trouble,” I told John. ” There was a massive boom in whisky which ended in 2022; which was exaggerated by the Covid pandemic when people were staying home and drinking more expensive bottles of Scotch and other whiskies. And I think there was a bit of a lack of realism within the industry.
“There was a sort of assumption that this golden period that the whisky industry went through was going to last forever. And it clearly hasn’t.”
Total exports of Scotch whisky are down from £6.2 billion in 2022 to around £5.4 billion in 2024. “What has caused this downturn?” I asked. “It’s difficult to really know. But there’s certainly been a lack of consumer confidence, which evaporated after Covid. There’s inflation. There’s war in Ukraine, which closed the Russian market. There are doubts over the Chinese market, which hasn’t performed as well as people were hoping.”
“All the major Scotch whisky companies are suffering falls in sales, falls in profits. And the newer ones I think, which established themselves in the last decade or so are perhaps the most vulnerable.”
“We haven’t seen any massive bad news in the industry in terms of companies going bust or distilleries completely closing, or administrations or whatever,” though I tild John that, according to people I have spoken to such as Alan Flower, managing director of Interpath Advisory: “They’re on the way.”
John Beattie, who gained 25 caps for Scotland as a number eight (back row) between 1980 and 1987, and also toured with the British and Irish Lions, has also worked as a civil engineer and a chartered accountant, and commenced working part-time with BBC Scotland in 1987 going on to become one of the broadcaster’s anchors for news, current affairs and sports coverage.