Edrington to treat US as ’emerging market’ to double sales

Edrington, owner of The Macallan Scotch whisky, has admitted it is “under-represented” in the US, but intends to double the size of the business in the next four years by treating the region as an emerging market.

The comment comes on the first anniversary of the establishment of Edrington Americas, which took control of the group’s regional distribution following the termination of its contract with Rémy Cointreau USA on 31 March 2014.

In an exclusive interview with The Spirits Business, Paul Ross, CEO of Edrington Americas, said the group has had a comparatively small footprint in the US, but now aims to grow the region to account for 30% of total sales.

“Back in 2008, we got about 14% of our business from North America; you’d expect over 30% for a company of our size,” he admitted. “So what we’re targeting is to grow North America almost like an emerging market and invest significantly behind that growth to rebalance our global footprint.”

Ross, who has been working on the establishment of Edrington Americas since 2011, claims to have already doubled sales in the region in the last four years.

However he admits Edrington’s strategy is to achieve the same result again by 2018.

“Edrington was underrepresented in the US, which is the world’s largest premium spirits market, so the opportunity to come here and set up a start-up was very exciting,” he said. “But for the company, more importantly, we needed to drive exceptional growth.”

Edrington saw turnover of £607.7 million in the year to 31 March 2014, a 2.7% increase on the £591.3 achieved in the previous year.

To read the full interview with Ross on the success of Edrington Americas over the past year, see the March 2015 edition of The Spirits Business, out next week.