Client Update - May 2025

It has been a good week for the Scotch whisky industry, with the announcement of the UK-India free trade agreement providing very welcome news after a tough year, and hope that a carve out from US tariffs is on the table.

The 150% tariffs in India will not be disappearing overnight, with negotiators suggesting that it will take up to a year for the changes to take effect. But for Scotch whisky suppliers used to making projections for the next decade, the prospect of India opening its doors to them in a matter of months will be mouth-watering.

That being said, while bottlers will be busy planning deals to get their product into the world's fifth largest economy, we don't expect an immediate influx of industry buyers on the WhiskyInvestDirect platform. Suppliers who have been coping with muted demand through the first few months of the year may well want to wait until deals are in place before purchasing the liquid they need, and we are expecting the impact of this historic agreement to be felt over the course of months and years rather than weeks.

Trade on the Live Order Board has seen an uptick since the announcement, and the new Great Value quick-buy package has proved popular as a fast way to identify good deals. All in all, it is very much business as usual, but many distillers and suppliers will have higher projections for the years ahead than they did two weeks ago.

Kind regards,

Ben Challen,

Commercial Director, WhiskyInvestDirect