Value of Irish spirits exports hits record high 

United States remains number one buyer — importing four times as many cases than from any other country

Whiskey alone saw 15.2 million cases sold worldwide while Irish cream sold 9.9 million cases. Photograph: Aidan Crawley/Bloomberg

The value of Irish spirits exports grew to a record high of €1.45bn during 2022 with the US remaining the number one buyer, a new report from Drinks Ireland shows.

According to the Irish Spirits Market Report for 2022, there has been a continued consumer trend towards “premiumisation” which is driving the increase in sales. Compared to 2021, the value of Irish spirits exports grew by 17% while domestic sales saw growth of 6%.

Volume is measured in sales of nine-litre cases. Between, Irish whiskey, Irish cream and poitín, 25.2 million nine-litre cases were sold around the world in 2022.

The US imported nearly four times as many of these spirits drinks from Ireland than any other country. In total, nearly 8.2 million cases were exported from Ireland to the US of which 5.84 million were cases of whiskey.

The next biggest market is the UK where 2.39 million cases of these three spirits were imported followed by Germany with 1.4 million cases. Whiskey alone saw 15.2 million cases sold worldwide while Irish cream sold 9.9 million cases.

Domestically, vodka remains Ireland’s favourite spirits drink accounting for 30% of all spirits sales. Whiskey accounted for 26% of all sales while gin had 13%.

Overall, 2.7 million nine-litre cases of spirits were sold in Ireland last year of which 54.3% were on-trade sales and 45.7% were off-trade sales.

'Premiumisation'

Cormac Healy, Director of Drinks Ireland, said there is a continuing trend towards the “premiumisation in the drinks industry” with the culture around drinking in Ireland “evolving”. He said consumers are increasingly choosing “quality over quantity”.

This move to premium products has had an impact on the sales of gin which was down 1.7% compared to 2021. The report said that this was driven by a slowdown in “standard” gin sales but premium gin sales increased by 15%.

The report added that by 2022 the war in Ukraine and the resulting energy crisis had a “hugely adverse impact” on producers.

Bryan Fallon, chair of the spirits section of Drinks Ireland, said the challenges presented by inflation have shown little sign of abating going into 2023 “driving up producer and consumer pricing across the globe”.