Wine sales hit by weak pound

Jun 16 2009 by Alun Thorne, Birmingham Post

Wine warehouse chain Majestic Wine said lower sales of champagne to recession-hit firms and the weak pound had more than halved annual profits.

The group reported a 55.8 per cent slide in pre-tax profits to £7.4 million after corporates reined in purchases of bubbly, while the strength of the euro put customers off “booze cruises” and made European wines more expensive to buy.

Majestic Wine took a £5.3 million writedown on the value of its French-based Wine and Beer World business. With this stripped out, underlying profits in the year to March 30 fell 22.3 per cent, it added.

But the UK’s biggest wine warehouse revealed a turnaround in recent trading, with like-for-like sales up two per cent in the ten weeks to June 8, compared with the 2.7 per cent drop over the full-year.