The Managing Director of Grand Oak Limited, a marketing wines and spirits firm, Aare Fatai Odesile, has said that the spirits industry is being harmed by adulteration.

In a recent interview with the Marketing Edge Magazine, Odesile said that individuals are able to adulterate spirit brands due to the low barrier entry in the distillery sector.

Explaining further, he said that because recycled bottle business has become a booming business today, it makes it easy for some people “to sit at the corner of their houses, manually apply cork, used label and package fake gin and masquerade it as the original.”

He added that it has become a major problem confronting the industry and they have been working with NAFDAC on checkmating the menace. He noted that as a brand owner, it his responsibility to protect the consumer. He listed some of the negative effects of adulteration to include damage to the brand as well as driving up marketing budget.

“Based on that, we constantly have to communicate to the consumer to alert him/her, this is the new feature, watch out for the original, go for the original Seaman’s Schnapps and all of that. So, it is a lot of issue confronting the distilleries in particular that may not be as much with other drinks, such as beer, because of the return bottle scheme”.

Other issues facing the industry include a weak naira which drives up imported raw material cost. So there is a need for a stronger naira to reduce the added cost.

The MD said that his company has to grapple with running an efficient operation which means cutting down on wastage and inefficiencies. Unfortunately, it sometimes leads to eliminating some jobs and finding people that can handle multiple tasks.

On the issue of consumer attitude towards its products, Odesile said that today’s consumer is much smarter and is not swayed by “imported mentality”, but more by “value proposition”. So one of the challenges he is faced with is finding out what the consumer wants.

“data, and getting into the real heart of value proposition of a consumer in Nigeria is one of the challenges facing a lot of business owners”.

Grand Oak Limited is the marketing arm of Lexcel Group. The company is involved in the marketing and distribution of a wide range of spirits and wines. Some of the brands are household names in the Nigerian spirits market such as Seaman’s Schnapps, Lord’s Dry Gin, Regal Dry Gin, 9ja Café Rhum, among others.