For those who are interested in a fast buck, here is a quick tip - the UK black market vodka business is a nice little earner. Rewards are so lucrative that bootleggers are not just interested in smuggling: they are willing to brew the stuff on home-soil. In May last year a lab technician, Mrydul Das was found guilty of having run an illegal industrial-scale distillery for two years. Considering that the venture was found to have netted seven million pound sterling, it is perhaps not so hard to see what Das’s motive was. Yet the market still remains something of an enigma – Britain isn’t Saudi Arabia – alcohol is neither illegal nor scarce. In Russia, where the consumption of counterfeit vodka kills five people an hour, the issue is price. Yet here for the cheaper brands, prices are near rock bottom. Why, then, are the bootleggers so successful?
To answer the question, we need to look a little deeper at the market strategy of the bootleggers. It cannot be sheer chance that they have targeted the vodka sector. Vodka production is relatively easy while its high ethanol content means that it especially addictive, ensuring repeat customers. Low production costs mean that, after plant installation and bottling, the bootleggers’ mark-up can be fairly high. The bootleggers favour targeting the bottom sector of the market. Das was manufacturing low-key supermarket brands such as Aldi’s Tamova Vodka and Nisa Today’s Kommisar Vodka. It seems that the plan was to gain legitimisation whilst capitalising on low consumer brand loyalty and quality expectations, helping the fraud remain discreet.
Das’s strategy of counterfeiting supermarket brands has proved popular with subsequent bootleggers. At the end of last month the Food Safety Authority (FSA) issued a warning about counterfeit bottles of SPAR’s Imperial Vodka being sold in non-affiliate stores. Das had also targeted the low-priced Scottish manufactured Glen’s Vodka, and it has since remained a favourite target of the black market. Another development last month saw a woman admitted to hospital in Cambridgeshire after having drunk from a counterfeit bottle of Glen’s.
Though supermarket chains are not implicated, being the victims of the fraud, smaller retailers do stock the counterfeit products. At a guess, if a retailer is selling 20 70cl bottles a week of a £7-99 product with a £3-99 mark-up he is an odd four thousand pounds richer by the end of the year. That perceived profit may be offset by the fines that the FSA can mete out, running into hundreds per bottle. Yet it is clearly not enough. To challenge the network, the oxygen of distribution needs to be cut off. In cash terms, the consumer barely benefits – one counterfeit brand was found to sell only a penny less than the price of the genuine article. If we want to defeat the market, it’s the bootlegger-retailer link that needs to be smashed.
No doubt the FSA and the lawmakers will take royal exception to this, but they need to remind themselves that counterfeit vodka can result in the loss of life. In 2003 a 42 year old woman died in Scotland after having drunk from a beverage called Vodka Russia. Even if that is a rare occurrence, injury is not unheard of. The counterfeited SPAR products contain such an excessive amount of methanol that it could blind. A small-time shopkeeper, who should have been more suspicious about his back-of-a-lorry delivery, is selling on potential poison. He hasn’t tasted the product and is wholly ignorant of the health consequences of the bottle he is stocking. It might not be malicious but it is exceptionally reckless. If prison sentences are automatically meted out for any counterfeit bottle found, you can bet your bottom dollar that there will be a lot less van-men walking through the shop-door.
