Caspar MacRae, the president and CEO of The Glenmorangie Company, is a familiar name in the global alcoholic beverage industry. Having managed luxury spirits brands for over two decades now, MacRae was formerly the global director of marketing and business development before taking charge of the company, which is a subsidiary of Louis Vuitton Moet Hennessy (LVMH), in July last year. Among his many achievements, he has overseen the transformation of Glenmorangie and Ardbeg, and the development of award-winning campaigns for both the single malt Scotch whisky brands. He has also championed its e-commerce business, which has grown seven-fold since 2020.
Edited excerpts from an exclusive interview:
How big is the market for you in India?
India is one of our most exciting and dynamic markets. It’s wonderful to see the development in the category and the consumers. India is one of the top three markets in the world for Glenmorangie. Our single malt sales are almost exactly split one-third across the Americas, one-third across Europe and Africa and one-third across Asia. As we look to Asia, India is a top-priority market.
There is a fantastic indexing of whisky in this country. India has a love affair with whisky. We feel very positive about the long-term. India is increasingly becoming an influential global cultural hub. When you talk about culture, music, food and all the usual suspects of popular culture, India is becoming much more influential in global tastes around the world today.
You took over as the president and CEO of The Glenmorangie Company sometime last year. So what have been your focus areas and priorities upon joining in your new role?
You always start your position as the CEO of this company with the recognition of hard work that has come before you and the desire to pass on the company in a better position. After all, the whisky that we are making today, it’s very unlikely I will be the person responsible for selling it in 12 years’ time. So we have a uniquely long-term perspective. I tend to look at the immediate growth and the opportunities of growth around the world. I also spend 50% of my time thinking about the longer term initiatives of our company.
We’ve just finished building our research and development centre at our distillery (in Scotland) that will allow us to make better whiskies in the future. In terms of our sustainability initiatives, we are investing a lot in moving towards becoming carbon-neutral by 2040.
You just talked about reducing your carbon footprint. So what are you all doing in terms of improving your environmental credentials?
We have a broad environmental focus and the single-most important one is carbon reduction. At our distillery in Tain (Scotland), one of the ways we have been able to do that is using all our liquid waste to produce methane gas that actually powers the distillery. At the moment, 20% of the distillery is powered by its own waste. We hope to make that 100% in another 10 years. That will be a big step towards becoming carbon neutral.
But we recognise that it’s not all about being carbon neutral, but it’s also about other things like biodiversity. We have a programme called DEEP (Dornoch Environmental Enhancement Project). This is a groundbreaking initiative that has helped us to reintroduce about 100,000 native oysters to the Dornoch Firth, which is the seaside right next to our distillery. This is part of our long-term project to get 1 million oysters because oysters are the natural filters of the environment and help in improving the quality of the sea water near our distillery.
Currently, which are your biggest markets and which are the geographies that you think are growing or have the potential to grow in the short- and long-term?
The biggest single channel is global travel retail. The single-most important customer for us is when you travel internationally and you see Glenmorangie at airports or at ferry terminals. In terms of domestic markets, the big three for us at Glenmorangie are the US, the UK (Scotland and England) and India.
We are investing extensively in the emerging markets such as large parts of the Asia-Pacific region including India, Japan, Taiwan and Korea; Latin America, such as Colombia; and Africa (South Africa, Kenya and Nigeria).
Can you give us some numbers in terms of growth, revenue or sales for the company in India?
While the single malt market in India is growing at 40% a year, we are going in strong double digits. We’ve grown quite significantly.
Going forward, what will be your strategy for India this year and beyond? What are your expectations?
We have high expectations. India is a dynamic economy, it has an educated young consumer base seeking to premiumise. It’s got that fast-growing whisky appeal. It’s got a culture that embraces whisky. India as a market is one of our long-term big bets. We would love India to be our No. 1 or 2 market worldwide in Glenmorangie sales. That would be a success we would love to see in the next 5-10 years.
There have been a number of Indian single malt whisky brands that have come up in the past few years. Have you tried any of them?
Yes, Indri, Amrut, Rampur… This is something that we are seeing across the world. There is a growing awareness of all the types of whisky. Single malt whisky tends to be the most refined, the combination of the barley and the way it’s distilled. If you are on a whisky journey as a drinker, a lot of them will eventually end up in single malts, as they know that is the most elevated type of whisky experience. The predominant supplier of single malt whisky has been Scotland, and that’s where it originated, but we have seen a growth in India, Ireland, Japan and Australia as markets in terms of producing single malt whisky.
It’s a good thing. Generally, it means there is a vibrancy to the category, there is an energy and dynamism which attracts new drinkers into discovery. It will always be about exploration. It’s the element of ‘the more the merrier’. But what it also means is that we need to make sure that we never compromise on our quality standards because the more consumers explore and the more they understand the category, we need to make sure that the quality of Glenmorangie keeps them coming back again and again.