Accolade Wines’ travel retail division has achieved volume growth of +9% year-to-date.

Accolade Wines has revealed volume growth of +9% in travel retail year-to-date, outpacing the overall business.

The update was delivered by General Manager Travel Retail and EMEA Sales Director Martin MacKinnon during a media event at last week’s TFWA World Exhibition in Cannes.

MacKinnon put the performance down to three key enablers: a strong team, great partnerships with customers and investing in its brands, which include the likes of Hardys Wines, Da Luca and Wise Wolf.

“The wine category remains under pressure across most of our key domestic markets, although our own domestic business continues to perform very strongly in the face of economic challenges,” he told members of the press, including TRBusiness.

“Consumers continue to grapple with cost-of-living pressures, so tough choices on where to spend disposable income means wine category growth is flat or in slight decline in key regions.

“With this in mind, like our domestic teams, our great travel retail team has achieved a very encouraging financial performance in the channel this year so far, driven by organic growth and new listings across airports, border stores and airline tender wins.”

Building on domestic strength

During his address, MacKinnon said the company’s priority is to grow the travel retail business in areas where Accolade Wines has a strong domestic presence.

He pointed to a tranche of listings for Grant Burge, Petaluma and St Hallett secured with Qantas in Australia across domestic and international routes, together with further business onboard Cathay Pacific.

Having offered Grant Burge with the carrier, the partnership has now extended to include St Hallett and Rolf Binder wines for travellers in all classes.

Addressing the Europe and Middle East travel retail market, MacKinnon added: “In Europe, we have a strong travel retail business in UK airports and in all the routes in and around the English Channel.

“This supports our category leadership position in the UK, where we are investing heavily in activations in UK airports in Q4 with our Da Luca Prosecco and on UK ferry routes with Remastered.

“We also have strong coverage in travel retail across key markets in Europe, and we are pleased to have a great offer in place in the Middle East, particularly in Dubai Duty Free. Through recent business reviews we have increased our offering in airports to reflect different varietals and the trend for premiumisation with our fine wine offering.”

Channel Sales Director EMEA Jeff Bond provided some important updates on key brands and innovations from Accolade Wines that were showcased at the TFWA World Exhibition.

“Our focus for travel retail has remained consistent for a number of years, concentrating on our core portfolio of Hardys, Mud House, Da Luca and premium lines,” he described.

“This remains as the base strategy, but we are introducing more disruptive expressions from the Old-World [wine category] such as Remastered, a twist on classic Italian wine with an eye-catching design that stands out on shelf and is competitively priced to draw younger shoppers into the wine category.

Martin MacKinnon, General Manager Travel Retail, Accolade Wines.

“Similarly, Wise Wolf continues to perform well domestically, and we are about to launch a fourth varietal, a French Sauvignon Blanc to the range.”

On sustainability, the company’s portfolio has been boosted by The Minibox series, boxed wines containing 1.5 litres of wine from brands such as Shed, Mud House and Hardys, with more in the pipeline.

The range’s new design is 27% smaller than previous versions, affecting a 3kg reduction in plastic per pallet. The packaging itself is -80% lighter than two standard glass wine bottles, claims Accolade.

Bond added: “This boxed wine experience offers a more sustainable way of consuming wine, removing the need to use bottles. We expect this to be a popular series in travel retail, especially with our cross-channel customers, targeting environmentally-conscious consumers with some of our best-known and loved wines.”

Elsewhere, Accolade announced a new launch in partnership with singer-songwriter and celebrity Dolly Parton.

Dolly Wines (pictured below) launched in September in domestic markets and the range, which include a prosecco and French rosé, will be available in DF&TR in Q1 2025.

The tie-up with Parton has already netted the brand three million-plus social media impressions, which is helping to give the Dolly Wines brand strong early momentum.