Johnnie Walker maintains its leadership of the duty-free spirits world. Despite a decline of -4.5% in 2013 the brand has maintained its strong lead over second-largest travel-retail brand Absolut, which also declined in 2013.
Johnnie Walker’s decline is almost entirely attributable to massive declines in important Asia-Pacific markets, whereas Absolut’s biggest loss came from the Americas.
The strongest growth of the top 10 travel-retail brands came from Jack Daniel’s, which overtook Chivas to take third place. Brown-Forman posted strong growth in its travel-retail sales for fiscal 2014; according to its annual report: “Global travel retail collectively delivered 13% underlying net sales growth (+18% reported), driven by price increases, successful innovation and new product launches.”
The second fastest-growing brand in the top 10 is Finlandia, which grew 14% in 2013 to tip the 400,000-case mark. Finlandia entered the top 10 this year, pushing out Courvoisier, which declined
-7.3%.
| Total volumes of spirits in the travel-retail market increased 1.4% globally in 2013, to reach 21.6m nine-litre cases; the top 100 brands accounted for 85% of these.
Top 10 of the IWSR’s Travel Retail Top 100 list |
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| Rank/Brand | Owner | Volume 2009 | Volume 2012 | Volume 2013 | % change 2013 on ’12 | %CAGR 2008-’13 |
| 1 Johnnie Walker | Diageo | 1,482.4 | 2,319.6 | 2,216.2 | -4.5 | 6.6 |
| 2 Absolut | Pernod Ricard | 859.5 | 1,001.8 | 897.5 | -10.4 | -3.2 |
| 3 Jack Daniel’s | Brown-Forman | 434.8 | 730.5 | 876.5 | 20.0 | 11.9 |
| 4 Chivas Regal | Pernod Ricard | 598.0 | 897.9 | 856.9 | -4.6 | 2.1 |
| 5 Bacardi | Bacardi | 575.5 | 695.3 | 696.1 | 0.1 | 1.6 |
| 6 Baileys | Diageo | 605.6 | 698.4 | 673.3 | -3.6 | -1.1 |
| 7 Smirnoff | Diageo | 581.8 | 623.0 | 620.7 | -0.4 | 0.0 |
| 8 Ballantine’s | Pernod Ricard | 381.7 | 564.4 | 581.2 | 3.0 | 3.3 |
| 9 Hennessy | LVMH | 270.0 | 476.6 | 482.8 | 1.3 | 13.8 |
| 10 Finlandia | Brown-Forman | 267.4 | 354.4 | 403.8 | 14.0 | 3.8 |
| Source: The IWSR Database 2014 | ||||||
| All volume figures in thousands of nine-litre cases | ||||||
About the Duty Free/Travel Retail Databases
The IWSR Duty Free/Travel Retail Databases quantifies the global duty-free and travel-retail business by volume and retail value. The database covers duty-free sales data at brand line and quality level by country and region for 16 key product categories.
About the IWSR
The IWSR is the leading source of analysis on the alcoholic beverage market. The IWSR’s database, essential to the industry, quantifies the global market of wine, spirits, beer and RTDs by volume and value, and provides insight into short- and long-term trends. Our data is used by all of the largest multinational wine and spirits companies, as well as many more local companies.
The IWSR’s unique methodology allows us to get closer to what is actually consumed and better understand how markets work. The IWSR conducts face-to-face interviews with 1,500 companies in 118 countries each year, with further input from 350 companies. The IWSR tracks overall consumption and trends at brand, quality and category level.