The Covid-19 pandemic has encouraged organisations across Africa to invest in distilling facilities for the first time, and prompted existing distillers and brewers to innovate and diversify.
This is according to Hendre’ Barnard, training and marketing manager at distillery equipment supplier Distillique, who says that in South Africa, the majority of craft distillers survived the lockdown and restrictions on alcohol sales, with many of them using the time to innovate and diversify their product lines. “A lot of the companies are now lining up export projects and others have diversified into new lines such as non-alcoholic beverages,” he says.
The lockdown has had a significant impact on the local market, with a massive increase in home brewing and distilling. “This put strain on the supply chain for raw materials such as yeast. Because of demand from home distillers, we were selling 200kg of yeast in one hour at one stage. Where we normally buy 50-60kg every two months, we were ordering a ton at a time.”
Barnard believes that the coming festive season will likely be disappointing in terms of sales. “Right now, craft brewers and distillers are focused on recovering, and some are trying to increase sales direct to the consumer rather than through an intermediary. They should also cut costs wherever possible and not over-produce for the festive season. We don’t know what level of lockdown we will be at this December, and because of the economic impact of the lockdown, there is a chance that sales will be lower than they were last year,” he says.
According to Barnard, elsewhere in Africa many countries realised they were too dependent on alcohol imports when the pandemic struck and there’s now been a surge in interest in distillery equipment across a number of countries.
With a surge in demand for alcohol-based sanitisers and a global market for certain essential oils for use in cosmetics, he sees growing opportunities for African entrepreneurs to open distilleries to meet demand.
These are among the issues that will be ventilated at food & drink technology Africa, which will be held in Johannesburg in July next year.
