Wales’ leading whisky producer The Welsh Whisky Company, and its strong Penderyn Whisky brand, is fast increasing its footprint in the travel retail channel. A new distillery – Penderyn’s third – recently opened on the site of the historic Hafod Morfa Copperworks in Swansea, Wales, with The Moodie Davitt Report in attendance. It is set to act as a springboard to double the brand’s whisky’s travel retail business by 2025 amid projected strong global growth.
With an excellent portfolio of whiskies bolstered by a new expression in Penderyn’s successful Icons of Wales series, Penderyn Patagonia, and its first exclusive to travel retail single malt whisky, Penderyn Faraday, among other innovations, the brand heads to the upcoming TFWA World Exhibition in Cannes with much to shout about.
Our Senior Business Editor Mark Lane spoke to Business Development Director Simon Roffe about the Penderyn Whisky portfolio, challenges, strategy and ambition for the exciting years ahead in the resurgent travel retail business.
Mark Lane: The opening of the new Copperworks distillery [pictured above] in Swansea was a big moment in the Penderyn brand’s history. How will this great new asset help to build your strength in travel retail?
Simon Roffe: We are very proud of the opening in Swansea of our Copperworks Distillery. It represents a massive increase in our capacity and ability to continue to drive growth around the world. The link back to the community, the history of ‘Copperopolis’ as Swansea was known, and the consumer experience the site offers, will expand our visitor centre experience significantly.
More broadly the masterclass facility within the distillery site will be a great incentive to work with for our UK-based retailers and partners.
A tremendous amount of work has gone into the Swansea project, and we view the funds involved as a transformative investment in our brand-building activity. It demonstrates to our travel retail partners that Penderyn is an established brand that is here to stay – and grow significantly – in the travel retail channel.
What are the core values and USPs of the Penderyn brand?
I would use three key words. Firstly, we are unique – our innovative stills and whisky-making process are like no others. Secondly, natural – our first Distillery sits within the Brecon Beacons National Park so our relationship to the environment is fundamental to what we do. And finally, passion – as the number one and original Welsh distiller and pioneers in ‘world whisky’, our commitment to delivering quality is paramount.
Why do you see the travel retail market as an important platform for growing the brand?
The key reason for Penderyn to drive its business in travel retail is to deliver a key platform in building brand awareness and support continuing growth in core and target markets around the world.
In a nutshell, travel retail – although the margin model is tight – plays an essential part in the Penderyn brand’s development in that we see it very much as a window for our brand around the world.
Where do you see your brand standing in the travel retail market, where shelf space is dominated by Scotch, Irish and US products?
Good question, and that is a challenge to our retail partners. High-quality whiskies are now being made in over 30 countries around the world and the world whisky category is among the fastest growing – offering premiumisation, innovation and critically a Sense of Place. Giving dedicated space to whiskies that fall into this bracket is a challenge few retailers have yet grasped.
There is a growing demand from consumers for whiskies outside the strongholds of the category – the Scottish, Irish and US products you mention – and the future-focused travel retail spirits retailer should be looking to meet that demand, in our opinion. Scotch is very good, but people are moving beyond that, looking for that ‘funky’ stuff, particularly younger drinkers. That’s our door into duty free.
Talk us through the Penderyn travel retail range.
All of our whiskies are available to the travel retail channel and we are keen to ensure they deliver on the critical elements of appeal, value and quality.
That includes three Penderyn Dragon range expressions, the more premium five-whisky Penderyn Gold range, plus a strong variety of Penderyn Whisky special editions such as those in the Icons of Wales series.
One of our more premium single malts Penderyn Gold Faraday, a portwood finish whisky celebrating our unique stills, is offered as a travel retail exclusive.
How would you summarise your travel retail strategy?
As previously mentioned, it’s vital that Penderyn shows up in travel retail – where our current consumers ‘are’ and where our future consumers ‘will be’. So that’s about making our award-winning single malts visible at attractive prices and with appealing offers to help them stand out.
We’re quite focused and targeted in terms of where we want to be in airport retail and that means we’re not going to want to chase every opportunity that comes to us.
Therefore, we’ll be quite selective also about the duty free operations that we work with and where we can go because we ultimately have limited amounts of stock. That means we have to focus hard on maximising the value of every bottle that we sell.
A Wales-Argentina whisky union: Introducing Penderyn PatagoniaPenderyn Distillery has announced the launch of the 11th edition for its Icons of Wales series, Penderyn Patagonia. Described by the brand as a “truly exceptional” blended malt whisky, the new expression marks a significant milestone in the distillery’s journey, “embodying the spirit of Wales and celebrating its rich cultural heritage”. According to the brand owner, Penderyn Patagonia stands as a testament to the enduring bond between Wales and its Welsh descendants in Patagonia, Argentina – 8,000 miles away.  The blend for the whisky is achieved by marrying Penderyn’s own single malt with that of the La Alazana Distillery in Patagonia, an innovative collaboration that bridges the gap between two distant lands united by history and shared values. On 28 July 1865, 153 intrepid individuals embarked on the historic Mimosa voyage, bound for Patagonia with dreams of establishing a Welsh colony that would preserve their language, culture, and way of life. Their vision, although met with the unexpected harshness of the Patagonian desert, persevered. Miners dug irrigation trenches, settlers engaged in trade with the local Tehuelche people, and a thriving community emerged. Today, Patagonia stands as a testament to the spirit of these pioneers, boasting 50,000 Welsh descendants, 5,000 Welsh speakers, and annual Eisteddfodau celebrations that honour their heritage. At the end of March 2022, Professor Brian Morgan, one of the founders and the first Chairman of Penderyn Whisky, visited Welsh Patagonia following an invitation to give a talk on the Penderyn brand to the Welsh-speaking community in the Chubut region. He met with the La Alazana Distillery owners, who travelled 600km from their distillery in the Andes to provide a wider range of single malt whiskies for the tasting experience at the event. This union was the catalyst for the creation of the new expression. Penderyn Patagonia, presented in an elegantly crafted bottle, will initially be available for £65 in the UK in September, before its release into international domestic and travel retail markets. |
You have noted before that Asia is a key market for Penderyn. What are the challenges of building the brand there and how are you overcoming them?
Asia is no doubt a target for all premium brands and it is one that will take a number of years to gain a strong foothold in. Key challenges exist for sure when considering Penderyn against the establishment that Scotch whisky and other dark spirits in particular represent.
Critical to overcoming them is building awareness by finding the right market partners domestically and using the platform of world whisky to encourage operators to consider our brand.
If you’re looking to grow from a premium perspective, then Asia clearly is a fertile area to focus on. Winning business with China Duty Free Group (CDFG) has been a huge boost for our travel retail efforts.
Even if you can capture just a very small element of the Chinese market that is huge for us.
CDFG placed a couple of orders with us at TFWA Cannes last year, which just changed the scale completely in terms of our travel retail business.
It is certainly a major challenge to build Penderyn brand awareness in the Chinese market. This is being achieved through a network of trade marketing agents. It was helpful to be in Singapore at the TFWA Asia Pacific Exhibition in May this year to identify and find partners who can execute for us in China, providing activation and the legwork on the floor.
Describe some of the airport activations for Penderyn, both already executed and planned.
It’s obvious we have limited resources globally compared to some of our more ‘illustrious’ competitors, so we are trying to be very specific in ensuring we build rate of sale through promotions, engaging in retailer-led activities and also by investing in location-specific activations when the opportunity is presented.
We know from recent successful high-profile promotions with Dufry – for example in London Heathrow Terminal 3 and Birmingham International in the UK – that Penderyn delivers amazing results if given the platform. The fundamental principle of getting ‘liquid on lips’ is critical to our ambition.
What are your ambitions for travel retail and what can you tell us about your plans for the future?
It’s always important to balance how much a brand chases business in the travel retail channel. For all the obvious benefits – the glamour, the visibility, the impact on brand awareness – I am always clear there is a careful balance.
The demands of the channel for all brands are exhausting and need to be well understood in terms of bottom-line impact. The growth we’ve experienced at Penderyn for the last year in travel retail has been phenomenal and the business is now nearly two-and-a-half times bigger measured against pre-pandemic levels.
As a share of the company’s overall business, our ambition is to keep travel retail growing as our international business takes an increasing share versus the UK domestic market.
What can we expect to see at your TFWA Cannes stand this year?
We’re so excited about this year’s event, not least because we have so much to show. We will be sharing several new initiatives. This includes the relaunch of our popular Penderyn Dragon range with a completely new bottle and gift box presentation and the launch of our first exclusive to travel retail single malt whisky, Penderyn Faraday, in a new 100cl bottle.
We are also launching the next in our Icons of Wales limited edition whiskies – Penderyn Patagonia, a unique collaboration with another single malt distillery in Argentina, celebrating a unique event in Welsh history [see panel story for more on the release].
What is your message to the travel retailers who have not yet onboarded Penderyn whisky?
As the trends and research we all read continue to suggest that shoppers are looking for newness, different products and yet trading up to more premium choices for themselves or as gifts, brands like Penderyn can offer just that.
With the proven track record around the world we now have, that should give operators confidence. We are an established brand, offering award-winning and uniquely produced whiskies that we know can deliver. As the world whisky category continues to grow, there is a wider choice to make your stores stand out. 
