Since the days of the British Raj, the Indian upper middle class has treated imported liquor with utmost respect. Frequent overseas travellers know what it is like to make a dash for that bottle before leaving the duty-free section of airports. But all that may soon be passe now with that highly coveted daaru soon to go off the retail shelves.
The Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) has come down heavily on suppliers of imported liquor by holding back close to 100 consignments at Mumbai and Delhi for not complying with FSSAI norms of listing the ingredients on the bottles.
New guidelines issued by the FSSAI authorities towards the end of last month are threatening to throw foreign liquor bottles off the shelves of retailers across India. According to the new guidelines, except for single ingredient foods, a list of ingredients are to be listed on the label. This applies even to alcoholic beverages, if additives including colour, water, and preservatives are used in their manufacture and are present in the final product. The guidelines further state, "These (ingredients) have to appear in descending order of their composition by weight or volume at the time of its manufacture." The FSSAI rules also state that water can be exempted from being listed as an ingredient, in cases where water forms part of an ingredient. So for Scotch, the water used during the distillation process need not be listed. "But water added to bulk Scotch to bring it down its alcoholic strength would now be treated as an ingredient, and hence be listed."
A highly placed industry source said, "If the situation does not get better in the coming four to six weeks, stocks will run dry and that is when the scarcity problem will start. At the moment, 63 containers have been held back in Delhi for not complying with the norms, while containers are piling up in Mumbai." Another source said, "It is the customer who is going to lose at the end of the day. The market is going to keep demanding but it is those bars which serve spurious liquor as well as contraband liquor that will flourish. The customer will never know the amount of dilution his drink is going to have."
Experts feel that the situation is very grim now and will take a long time for the market to return to normal. An industry expert said, "FSSAI has allowed containers which contained alcohol that had expiry dates and nutritional values on their labels to enter. This sudden dip in the availability of imported brands such as Glenfiddich, Glenmorangie, Glenlivet, Malibu Rum, Moet and Chandon, Moet Hennessy, etc. will have a negative impact on the market. The market will take more than three months to return to normal. On top of that, since liquor is a state subject, the new labels will have to get approved by state excise authorities as well. Looks like there is no good news for customers."
Experts are of the opinion that duty-free stores across all international airports in the country will also be harmed. Anirban Dutta Chowdhury, country head, Nuance Group, which manages duty-free shops at Mumbai and Bangalore airports, said, "We have heard of these regulations coming into place but haven't faced any difficulty yet. We are FSSAI-compliant and frankly it is the suppliers who have to comply with the new laws. We haven't faced any such issues as of now and stocks are all getting cleared on time."
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