Trade Depot Targets Nigeria’s $420m Wine Market
Dike Onwuamaeze
The Trade Depot is targeting the Nigerian wine market of $420 million with an Italian Amabile De Rosa sweet wine, with a pledge to commence local manufacturing of some products it has been importing into the country.
This was disclosed by the Chief Executive Officer of Trade Depot, Mr. Onyekachi Izukanne, during the unveiling of Amabile De Rosa where he declared that over 50 million bottles of wine are consumed annually in Nigeria.
Izukanne said: “A very big part of our strategy is import substitution. Anything that we import today that can be produced locally, the objective for us over the next three years is that we have that item completely locally produced. As we speak, we are finalising arrangement that will kick off this year with massive manufacturing of operations for a lot of beauty and personal care items in our portfolio.
“The production we are starting this is for export meaning that we are going to earn foreign exchange.That is the way we want to go. Once we get from the data what the market wants, we will immediately source it, establish demand, create local production. We want an Africa that is producing for itself and trading among itself. That is our mantra as an organisation.”
He described Amabile De Rosa as a premium drink because of the places they are displayed and consumed. Recently, Amabile is the wine of choice at the probably the most high profile event in Nigeria that had 50 heads of state across Africa in attendant.
Commenting on the Nigerian wine market, Izukanne said that “in Nigeria, we drink about 50 million bottles of wine. Nigeria is a $420 million wine consumption market every year. This volume keeps growing every year and is driven by GenZs and the millennial. And 70 per cent of this consumption is by people under 45 years.”
He added that this growth is also driven by preference for sweet wines. “This implies that there are significant opportunities for sweet wines in our market. Our objective is to find a partner to develop a wine that is sweet and fun to drink so that consumers will have quality options to go for.
He also said that TDL is targeting the creation of 4,000 jobs within the next two years with the introduction of Amabile Rose.
“We expect that the Nigerian wine market will continue to grow at 5.0 to 10 per cent volume wise year-on-year. In our view from three years from now we will be consuming about 50 million bottles of wine every year. We expect the trend in the retail wine will continue to increase,” he said.
