UK pushes for bottling of whisky in third country

British officials negotiating a free trade agreement (FTA) are advocating bottling their whisky ‘in transit’ in a third country for reasons related to cost, logistics, and ‘premium-ness’ of the products, a person aware of the development said.

- Ravi Dutta Mishra & Gireesh Chandra Prasad

Negotiations on alcoholic beverages assume significance as India considers opening its vast market to countries such as the UK, Australia, Canada, and the European Union (EU) under the FTA route. India emerged as the world’s largest consumer of scotch whisky—a key UK export—last year.

"The UK side wants, as part of the FTA, what they are calling ‘bottling in transit’. What they mean by that is that the product will be exported from the UK to a third country—it could be some country in the EU—where it will be bottled," a person aware of the current round of negotiations said on condition of anonymity.

"Bottling can happen in one or two ways. Either they just repack it from a barrel to smaller bottles, or it may even involve dilution and some addition of ingredients. We are discussing their suggestions, and we will see how best we can resolve this," the person added.

Queries sent to the spokespeople for the ministries of commerce and finance remained unanswered till press time.