Sales of middle-priced whiskies saw the largest decline in Taiwan this year because local consumers are going out to eat less often amid rising inflation and an economic slowdown, a Japanese whisky company official said yesterday.
Suntory Taiwan Ltd (台灣三得利) said sales of its high-priced Yamazaki Single Malt Whisky (NT$1,000 and above) and low-priced Suntory Whisky (below NT$500) grew between 5 percent and 10 percent year-on-year in the first seven months of this year.
However, its revenue was eroded by the plummeting sales of its middle-priced Scotch Whisky, such as its Prime Blue pure malt Scotch whisky (priced between NT$600 and NT$800), which meant the company’s growth remained flat this year.
“Whiskies priced between NT$500 and NT$1,000 are the most popular among local consumers, volume wise, but they have also seen the largest sales drop,” Shunichi Ninomiya, chairman and president of Suntory Taiwan, told the Taipei Times in an interview yesterday.
“More and more consumers in Taiwan have begun to reduce the frequency of dining out owing to the sluggish economy, which affects our whisky sales,” he said.
Ninomiya said the decline in whisky sales already started in the second half of last year, and was not expected to improve until next year.
Drinks Wines & Spirits Co (橡木桶洋酒), the nation’s largest retailer of imported wines and spirits, agreed with Ninomiya, saying the local whisky market had been affected by the increasingly “M-shaped” society.
The company said that sales of middle-priced whiskies, such as Johnny Walker Black Label, priced between NT$500 and NT$600, declined by 10 percent in the first seven months of this year from a year ago. And consumers are moving towards either high-priced or low-priced whiskies.
“Sales have been slowing since March because of the lack of consumer confidence and rising oil and electricity prices, which have led consumers to become increasingly cautious on spending,” Jessica Yuan (袁德�?marketing director of Drinks Wines & Spirits, said by telephone yesterday.
In addition, Yuan said the company had originally hoped to see 20 percent growth in year-on-year sales this year, but only managed to remain flat as of the end of last month.
However, with better-than-expected Father’s Day sales this week, Yuan said the company is still optimistic about sales growth during the Moon Festival period and the second half of this year.
NO BREAKTHROUGH? More substantial ‘deliverables,’ such as tariff reductions, would likely be saved for a meeting between Trump and Xi later this year, a trade expert said China launched two probes targeting the US semiconductor sector on Saturday ahead of talks between the two nations in Spain this week on trade, national security and the ownership of social media platform TikTok. China’s Ministry of Commerce announced an anti-dumping investigation into certain analog integrated circuits (ICs) imported from the US. The investigation is to target some commodity interface ICs and gate driver ICs, which are commonly made by US companies such as Texas Instruments Inc and ON Semiconductor Corp. The ministry also announced an anti-discrimination probe into US measures against China’s chip sector. US measures such as export curbs and tariffs
The US on Friday penalized two Chinese firms that acquired US chipmaking equipment for China’s top chipmaker, Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC, 中芯國際), including them among 32 entities that were added to the US Department of Commerce’s restricted trade list, a US government posting showed. Twenty-three of the 32 are in China. GMC Semiconductor Technology (Wuxi) Co (吉姆西半導體科技) and Jicun Semiconductor Technology (Shanghai) Co (吉存半導體科技) were placed on the list, formally known as the Entity List, for acquiring equipment for SMIC Northern Integrated Circuit Manufacturing (Beijing) Corp (中芯北方積體電路) and Semiconductor Manufacturing International (Beijing) Corp (中芯北京), the US Federal Register posting said. The
India’s ban of online money-based games could drive addicts to unregulated apps and offshore platforms that pose new financial and social risks, fantasy-sports gaming experts say. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government banned real-money online games late last month, citing financial losses and addiction, leading to a shutdown of many apps offering paid fantasy cricket, rummy and poker games. “Many will move to offshore platforms, because of the addictive nature — they will find alternate means to get that dopamine hit,” said Viren Hemrajani, a Mumbai-based fantasy cricket analyst. “It [also] leads to fraud and scams, because everything is now
MORTGAGE WORRIES: About 34% of respondents to a survey said they would approach multiple lenders to pay for a home, while 29.2% said they would ask family for help New housing projects in Taiwan’s six special municipalities, as well as Hsinchu city and county, are projected to total NT$710.65 billion (US$23.61 billion) in the upcoming fall sales season, a record 30 percent decrease from a year earlier, as tighter mortgage rules prompt developers to pull back, property listing platform 591.com (591新建案) said yesterday. The number of projects has also fallen to 312, a more than 20 percent decrease year-on-year, underscoring weakening sentiment and momentum amid lingering policy and financing headwinds. New Taipei City and Taoyuan bucked the downturn in project value, while Taipei, Hsinchu city and county, Taichung, Tainan and Kaohsiung
RSS