Champagne shipments are expected to fall by around 3% to between 312 and 314m bottles in 2012, back to the level of 2005/6, after a poor November saw sales drop between 6 and 7% on the same month in 2011. Last year, when 42m bottles were sold in December it was the lowest figure for that month since 2004, says Michel Letter, managing director of GH Mumm and Perrier-Jouët at Pernod Ricard. “If we do the same this December, that will make 312m bottles for the whole year.”
With “a lot of promotion on the French market recently” where prices in hypermarkets have regularly dropped below €10 a bottle, he expects that level at least to be reached. “This compares with 323m bottles last year,” says Letter “and while a lot of people will complain, it only takes us back to the shipment level in 2005/6 and is not too bad [given the widespread economic recession]. The problem is we have no idea of how things will develop next year making forecasting difficult.
“The French economy is not likely to recover next year and while the US and Asia are doing well, with a 1% downturn in France [where 56% of all champagne sales were made last year] you need a 10% increase in Asia to compensate. The difficult markets are in Old Europe where France, down 4.9% to the end of October, the UK, Spain and Italy have all fallen. All the growth for the category is coming in markets outside Europe with Japan, Australia and China all doing well,” says Letter.
“For the second year running Japan, where exports were up 26% in the first half year, has been our leading market for Belle Epoch [Perrier-Jouët’s prestige cuvée]. In Australia, where shipments were up 16.2% in the first half, we have also done very well, partly because of the Pernod Ricard wine connection and through taking over [from Moët] sponsorship of the Melbourne Cup.”