Gin sales decrease by more than a third

03-Mar-2022 - Last updated on 03-Mar-2022 at 16:16 GMT

Consumer 'fatigue' for gin: data from CGA revealed total gin sales have fallen by more than a third when compared with 2019 (Credit: Getty/ puhhha)

Related tags Gin Cga Spirits Sales

Total sales of gin have decreased by 38.5% when compared with the same period in 2019, according to data collected by CGA.

In 2019, overall gin sales in value were £1,695.6m whereas as of January 2022, they had decreased to £1,042.7m (down 38%), with volume sales of 9-litre cases down 41.5%.

CGA senior client manager Tom Quinn said: “Gin has struggled to return to the success the category once saw, only achieving 61.5% of the total value sales it achieved in 2019 during 2021.

“That being said, within the gin category, there has been a slight resurgence from flavoured gin and premium flavoured gin in particular, which has stolen 0.8 percentage point (ppt) value share of total spirits v moving annual total (MAT) two years ago, demonstrating the continued potency this subcategory has demonstrated throughout the pandemic, as well as the desire for consumer trade up within gin.”

Trade fatigue

Flavoured gin saw the smallest drop in sales of 26.6% with total sales value having fallen from £676.5m two years to £496.2m in January 2022.

Pink gin saw sales of 9-litre cases fall from 452,916m to 280,121m (a drop of 38.2%), while total sales for the subcategory fell by 32.5% from £480.9m to £324.8m.

Total sales in value for non-flavoured gin saw the biggest drop, falling by 46.6%.

However, total sales in value of standard and premium gin across the entire spirits category grew by 12.7% and 8.5% respectively quarterly.

Quinn added: “Based on consumers interacting more so with categories which are tough to recreate at home (cocktails, shots, and shooters), or that are a main component in the late-night sector in terms of drinks sales (vodka), we’ve seen a bit of off trade fatigue in the case of gin.

Easier to drink at home

“A G&T is much easier to drink at home so when consumers are venturing out, they are treating themselves to serves which are harder to replicate.

“In addition to this, gin consumers tend to be much older than vodka and whiskey consumers, with 29% aged 55 and above, which may be another reason the gin category is struggling.

“A considerable proportion of gins consumer base is still not confident in returning to the out of home market as a result of the pandemic.”