Miles Beale has been the chief executive of The Wine & Spirit Trade Association since mid-2012. Prior to his decade-plus as the head of the London-based industry body, which holds a register of around 350 members, his career has included a handful of roles in various UK governmental departments, including two-and-a-half years with the Department for Environment Food & Rural Affairs (DEFRA).
Global Drinks Intel: Is the role of a trade association the same now as it’s always been?
WSTA chief executive Miles Beale: The fundamentals are still the same. The WSTA still concentrates on three areas: economic & fiscal, environmental policy and responsibility, which is related to health and obesity. We’re also still able to tell our members what they need to do according to regulations at any given point in time and we can tell them what’s coming next – although that’s a bit more complicated now than it used to be.
If anything, we’ve become more important. In our industry, we’ve had a series of shocks to the system. We’re the largest exporter of spirits and the second-largest importer of wine in the world – and our biggest trading partner is the EU. There couldn’t be an industry that’s more impacted in terms of its day-to-day business by Brexit than us.
Another area where we’ve grown in importance is, a lot of business can occur without having to be face to face. We can run lots of different types of communication with lots of different types of members. We can tailor it and it doesn’t take us ages. We run an online members session every fortnight, for example. Members like that they can drop in or out without having to leave the office. That’s incredibly efficient for people.
Trade associations today are able to demonstrate their value more effectively.
GDI: Is it expensive to be a member of a trade association?
MB: It depends who you join – we’re definitely one of the cheapest! You could join the WSTA if you’re a small business for GBP500 (US$630) a year, which is less than you’d spend on two hours with a lawyer. Our advantage has always been that we’re not mono-category and we have everyone up and down the supply chain as members.
One thing that some people have worried about with the WSTA is whether we’re more wine or more spirits. That’s irrelevant when you think about moving goods. Another is whether we’re retailer or producer. Again, if you’re trying to source things from the other side of the world and get them here, the supply chain has to work better.
In our industry, logistics people used to be the equivalent of the statistician on a TV programme: They were behind the scenes. Suddenly, they’ve been thrust into the limelight because that’s more important than anything else. You can wax lyrical about how beautiful the wine tastes or how wonderful the label looks, but if you can’t get it to a restaurant by next Thursday, then your business isn’t going to survive.
GDI: How hard is it for a smaller member to get share of voice in an organisation that also has the national divisions of multinational companies?
MB: They very rarely disagree. What’s more interesting for a smaller company is our advice on what you need to do to be compliant with all the regulations. The bigger companies often want lobbying.
Most big companies recognise that the vibrancy of the UK market is down to the fact that we have a lot of small businesses. For example, there are now more distilleries in England than in Scotland – the growth has come with small businesses and it gets people talking about spirits.
There are some things where everyone wants the same thing – duty is a good example. Everyone wants the duty system to be simpler.
Ultimately, they respect each other’s position as being good for the marketplace. As long as we can service both, it’s no skin off anyone’s nose.
GDI: Is there a resistance among your members to sharing best practice at the risk of losing competitive advantage?
MB: When I first arrived, the understanding was that the government looked at the alcoholic drinks industry as a unit. We’re at a nadir at the moment, however, where the industry isn’t operating as one. When companies are lobbying government, they’re trying to be category- or even company-specific. That’s become a bit divisive.
Probably later this year, we’re going to have an incoming government that will ask us what we as an industry have been doing to be increasingly responsible in the last five years, probably around obesity. As an industry, we haven’t got a great story to tell at the moment. We can only give an answer if we’re doing it together.
GDI: What’s the split of the WSTA’s time between educating its members and representing its members?
MB: Our bigger members want more from us on the influencing side. The smaller members, meanwhile, care a bit less about the law because they just think they’re too small to make a difference, even though they’re not. We do more lobbying than we used to overall, so I’d say it’s about 60% influencing.
We get educated too, of course. If DEFRA say they’re going to introduce an extended producer responsibility scheme, we find out from them what they mean, then go back to our members to explain. They then tell us that it doesn’t work like that, and they educate us.
We’ve been doing more on duty in the last two years than on anything else by quite a long way. After the next election, that will fall away to be replaced by influencing environmental policies. We accept as an industry that we have to be responsible for recycling the packaging for our products. The link we’re beginning to make to government is that to pay for the systems that deliver better environmental outcomes, the industry isn’t going to be able to do that if you tax the hell out of us. At some point, we’ll have to help government understand – that’s the challenge.
GDI: Are politicians stupid?
MB: No, they’re generalists. They’re in it for the right reasons, but it’s a thankless task. They’re very responsive to their local electorate, particularly as you get closer to an election.
With everything going on in the world, our industry isn’t going to be in the top ten list of things that MP’s [Members of Parliament] worry about. We have to make them worry about it – that’s why it’s so important for our members to write to their MP’s.
To get yourself heard in the current climate and find an MP who will go into bat for you is quite hard work.
GDI: Is your in-tray fuller than usual ahead of the pending general election?
MB: This year, we’re doing everything at least three times – we have to talk to the Conservatives, Labour and the Liberal Democrats because all of them could be involved in a government towards the end of 2024.
Some of the stuff we’re talking about isn’t necessarily party politically sensitive, such as the new duty system for alcohol. We’ve tried to encourage the Labour opposition to think it’s rubbish, but they’re not going to change it. The question then is, how could they make it work better? They need to use that to attack the government when in opposition. Then, we want them to understand it if they get into government.
GDI: Are the different governmental departments talking to each other?
MB: The Treasury department is in charge of alcohol duty. They decided to move to a new way of taxing alcohol according to strength. We’d agree with that, but they haven’t got a single rate per unit of alcohol, which is what we wanted. Instead, they think that stronger drinks are more damaging than weaker drinks, even though the amount of alcohol might be exactly the same. I don’t follow that logic.
When they originally moved the duty structure, they didn’t know that DEFRA had been talking to us about labelling alcohol to one-tenth of a degree – like they do in Australia and the US – rather than rounding up to the nearest half degree. That’s a good idea, but now, instead of having half-degree integers, we’ve got them to one decimal point. That’s 130 different payment points for all wines, rather than a tenth of that.
The Treasury had absolutely no idea that DEFRA was going to do that. We’ve had to join them up. My experience at the moment is that if they’re listening to business, they don’t hear. I’d also say that DEFRA hasn’t really helped us convince the Treasury that they need to look at it again.
There used to be three duty rates for alcohol in the UK, now there are 105 – from February 2025, there’ll be 130.
GDI: How ahead or behind the government’s environmental aspirations is the UK’s wine and spirits industry?
MB: We can’t exactly say we’re wonderfully environmentally friendly. In spirits, there’s a lot of of carbon impact from distilleries. In wine, we’re importing a huge amount from the opposite side of the world – English wine is growing, but it’s still less than 1% of the market. The good news is that shipping wine in bulk is increasing, which is much more environmentally friendly. But, we’re still sourcing it from the other side of the world.
We’re keen to find best practice from our members and try to make sure the bigger companies are demonstrating what they’re doing in an open way so that the smaller ones can copycat as much as possible.
At the same time, it’s hard to tell where the baseline is. Our drive at the moment is to ascertain what we should be measuring and how we should be measuring them. One example is water usage. In New Zealand or Chile, there’s a lot of water available that costs nothing because it comes off the mountains. In South Africa or Australia, water usage is a massive problem. So, how do you score water usage?
Likewise with logistics: French, Spanish, Italian producers might be shipping a lot less here in bulk, but, of course, they’re not travelling very far. So, what should we measure? How are we measuring it? And how do we top up those scores? It could all do with being a bit simpler.
GDI: What are your thoughts on one-pint (56.8cl) bottles for sparkling wine?
MB: Which pints? Metric or or imperial?! I’m being facetious, but this is a good example of government operating poorly. DEFRA consulted and different people said a pint would be useful. The question then was, which pints? One of them said a metric pint, another said an imperial pint. So DEFRA did both. That is not good government.
We didn’t comment on it publicly because we didn’t think it was worth commenting on. The fundamental question is, are any consumers asking for this at all? Because if they aren’t, it’s totally pointless.
GDI: Yet, we’ve had this tumultuous event happen that, by your own admission, has made your job – and the role of this trade association – more relevant.
MB: Yes.
GDI: So why aren’t you embracing this Brexit benefit?
MB: DEFRA didn’t ask us if it was worth having both formats – to which the answer would have been no. They shared the press release with us and asked if we’d like to offer a supportive quote. On this occasion, I couldn’t justify both formats being there – I’m not sure I can justify either format being there, if no one’s bothered to ask whether the consumer even wants it.
Where we’re consulted, we can play a role. If people do things without telling us, it’s impossible. That’s the kind of conversation we’re trying to facilitate.
GDI: Who do you recommend your members vote for in the next general election?
MB: I would never make a specific recommendation, but I would encourage them to vote. I think there’s quite a lot of apathy and I can understand why, but no one needs to make the case that who is in power makes a difference. In the last few years, we’ve seen a huge number of examples of where it really matters.
What I would say is, get to know your MP, whoever they are. The more you know them, the more they’re likely to work for you. You need to build the relationship. Our members have never been more engaged with politicians than they are now – sometimes it’s out of desperation! That gives us much more strength in our negotiations than if those relationships didn’t exist.
We’re very happy to lead on the lobbying, but we’re stronger as a collective.
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