LETTER: Tiny Distell is at a double disadvantage
The government has done nothing to further favourable access to China for SA wines
The furore over the prohibition of liquor sales in SA and the ban on wine exports failed to do the subject justice. Distell, as SA’s largest liquor producer, is a central player in the controversy and while widely portrayed as a giant and recently even termed a behemoth in Business Day, it is actually a very small player compared with its competition.
Diageo, for instance, has a market cap of R1.455-trillion, 93 times larger than Distell’s market cap of R15.6bn. Scale provides dramatic advantages to the big foreign players, including Diageo, AB InBev, Pernod Ricard and Heineken, putting tiny Distell at a distinct daily disadvantage...
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