Organic products grow with 50% at the Swedish alcohol monopoly

Systembolaget, Sweden’s retail monopoly for alcohol, reports an increase in sales of 50% for organic products, including wine, for the third quarter 2010 compared to Q3-09. What the increase is for wine only is not reported. The total market share of organic products at the retail monopoly is 3%.

Systembolaget carries 117 organic products in their product range (“the fixed range”). They do not specify how many (or few) of those are wines. “To respond to (customer’s) demand we will continue to develop and broaden the range (of organic products) in the future”, says Marie Nygren, purchasing director at Systembolaget according to their press release.

But perhaps the conclusion should be the opposite? that they should suspend all organic products? The monopoly has as one objective to minimise alcohol sales (or at least not increase sales). It’s not easy to be a monopoly…

Sales of wine grew with 2.6% compared to Q3-09 to reach 49 million litres.

(NB: Organic wine is short for wine made from organically grown grapes. The EU recently failed to reach an agreement on regulations for organic winemaking. Today there are only rules for organic farming e.g. vine growing.)

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• Terry Theise on Organic and Biodynamic Wine (organicwinejournal.com)
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• A New Charter For The European Organic Wines (organicwinejournal.com)